LETTERS TO DEAD AUTHORS
In 2016 I ran a series of Letters to Dead Authors written by living authors.
The series was inspired by Andrew Lang’s 1866 book that I found in my campus library, and is in celebration of my forthcoming book that includes a series of postcards to a dead author: The Bitter Life of Božena Němcová is now available from Rose Metal Press.
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ARCHIVE:
3/26/16 Michael Martone to Edith Hamilton
4/3/16 Molly McCaffrey to Nora Ephron
4/10/16 Margaret Luongo to Larry Brown
4/17/16 Michael Griffith to Eudora Welty
4/23/16 Jac Jemc to Ellen Raskin
5/15/16 Martin Seay to James Clavell
5/30/16 Anthony Michael Morena to Gustave Flaubert
6/26/16 David Bell to Rosemary Sutcliff
8/21/16 Lee Upton to Muriel Spark
9/18/16 Kathleen Rooney to René Magritte
11/6/16 John Carr Walker to William Saroyan
WHY DEAD AUTHORS?
In this 1866 letter to the already dead W. M. Thackeray, Andrew Lang writes of all the things that stand in the way of writing to living authors – such as being accused of being a “parasite” or of “vex[ing] a rival”- and makes the case for the freedom he feels in writing letters to dead authors:
ph.d. in creative writing 