Afternoon Craft Talk/Q&A: “The Hidden Machinery: The Art of Fiction” with Margot Livesey
Author: lskramer
Author: lskramer
Margot Livesey is the award-winning author of ten books, including a collection of stories, Learning by Heart, and eight acclaimed novels: Homework, Criminals, The Missing World, Eva Moves the Furniture, Banishing Verona, The House on Fortune Street, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, and Mercury, which was named a Best Book of 2016 by Kirkus Reviews, Barnes & Noble, Bookpage, and The Seattle Times Her most recent book is a collection of essays on the art of writing, The Hidden Machinery, about which James Magnuson, the Director of the Michener Center for Writers, says, “There is no finer teacher of writing in America than Margot Livesey. The young writer who spends an hour with Livesey leaves with pockets filled with nuggets of her sly intuitions. To have an entire book of her wit, wisdom and constructive suggestions is to possess the mother lode.” Ms. Livesey grew up in a boys’ private school in the Scottish Highlands, where her father taught and her mother was the school nurse. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the N.E.A., the Massachusetts Artists’ Foundation, and the Canada Council for the Arts, and she has taught at Boston University, Bowdoin College, Brandeis University, Carnegie Mellon, Emerson College, Tufts University, Williams College, and the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. She currently teaches at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Alice Sebold says, “Every novel of Margot Livesey’s is, for her readers, a joyous discovery. Her work radiates with compassion and always, deliciously, mystery.”