“truth out of artifice: a talk with wells tower”
Friday, April 23, 7 p.m.
Center for Documentary Studies Auditorium

Wells Tower, author of the much-acclaimed book of short stories Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned and many other stories and articles, will discuss his development as a writer and especially the affinities between fiction and nonfiction. The conversation will be moderated by Alexa Dilworth, publishing director at the Center for Documentary Studies.

Writing in The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani proclaimed: “This arresting debut collection of stories decisively establishes Mr. Tower — a magazine journalist who has also won two Pushcart Prizes — as a writer of uncommon talent, a writer with Sam Shepard’s radar for the violent, surreal convolutions of American society; Frederick Barthelme’s keen ear for contemporary slang; and David Foster Wallace’s eye for the often hilarious absurdities of contemporary life.

Wells Tower’s short stories and journalism have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, McSweeney’s, The Paris Review, The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, The Washington Post Magazine, and elsewhere. He received two Pushcart Prizes and the Plimpton Prize from The Paris Review. He divides his time between Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and Brooklyn, New York.

Read More: http://us.macmillan.com/everythingravagedeverythingburned

“Truth Out of Artifice: A Talk with Wells Tower” is part of the the Documentary Narrative Speaker Series. The series is presented in conjunction with the CDS course Documentary Writing, taught this spring by Duncan Murrell. The course, along with this speaker series, explores reporting and writing in the long-form documentary tradition.