Truth Recovery: an interview with Lance Olsen

Loydell, Rupert ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2730-8489 and Olsen, Lance (2024) Truth Recovery: an interview with Lance Olsen. New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing, 21 (2). pp. 196-206. ISSN 1479-0726

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Abstract / Summary

Lance Olsen is author of more than 30 books of and about innovative writing, including, most recently, the novels Skin Elegies (Olsen, 2021) and Always Crashing in the Same Car (Olsen, 2023). His short stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals and anthologies. A Guggenheim, Berlin Prize, D.A.A.D. Artist-in-Berlin Residency, Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, two-time N.E.A. Fellowship, and Pushcart Prize recipient, as well as a Fulbright Scholar, he teaches experimental narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah.

This interview is a dialogue about the blurring of fiction and non-fiction, creative writing's place and role in the 21st Century, and Olsen's commitment to experimental writing and his use of processes, concepts and ideas to subvert what many regard as traditional writing and storytelling. It also considers how narrative can be deconstructed, reconfigured, re-constructed and re-invigorated; the possibilities and ethics of remix and appropriation; the failures of mainstream publishing; and how we can or might represent our complex and confusing lives on the page. Olsen's use of (at times oppositional and contradictory) multiple or polyphonic voices, changing points of view, stylistic mutation and contrasting forms, along with a frequent blurring of story, script, prose poetry and stream-of-consciousness writing facilitate and encourage the reader to assemble their own narratives, without this ever being anything other than enjoyable.

It is to be hoped that the interview will encourage and assist others to rethink creative-writing pedagogy, or at least consider the theoretical assumptions behind normative teaching and writing.

Item Type:	Article
ISSN:	1479-0726
eISSN:	1943-3107
Subjects:	Education Communication Communication > Creative Writing Literature Communication > Journalism
Courses by Department:	The School of Communication
Related URLs:	Publisher
Depositing User:	Rupert Loydell
Date Deposited:	12 Sep 2023 14:46
Last Modified:	18 Nov 2024 15:05
URI:	https://repository.falmouth.ac.uk/id/eprint/4924

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