The best way to learn is from the advice of professionals. For aspiring authors, the annual Raymond Carver Reading Series at Syracuse University is an opportunity to do just that. Students are able to meet published authors and listen to their stories.

Sarah Harwell, the coordinator for ETS 107: “Living Writers” — the class that benefits from the lecture series — and the associate director of creative writing, said the program is important for students to participate in because it helps them better understand the writing process.

“The students learn what the contemporary writers are doing with language today versus what authors were doing one hundred years ago,” Harwell said.

Raymond Carver, who passed away from cancer at a relatively young age in 1988, was a writer who taught at Syracuse University. SU honored Carver by naming its annual reading series after him. This year’s series kicks off with The New York Times best-selling American author and current SU professor George Saunders. Students enrolled in ETS 107: “Living Writers” are required to attend the event, but it is also open to the public. The event will take place at 5:30 p.m. in Gifford Auditorium in Huntington Beard Crouse Hall.

Each year, the creative writing committee selects three published poets and three fiction writers to come to SU and discuss their writing. The committee chooses these authors based on their work in contemporary literature.

This year’s first speaker, George Saunders, is the author of “Tenth of December,” a book of short stories that won The New York Times bestseller. In the book, Saunders touches upon topics including class and power, morality and loss.

“I try to write about things that matter and in a way that will, I hope, be entertaining,” Saunders said in an email.

Saunders said he feels that the two short stories in his book that grab the reader’s attention most are “Escape from Spiderhead” and “The Semplica-Girl Diaries” because “they are sort of wild and sci-fi.” But oftentimes an author will deem one short story symbolic, by naming the entire collection after it.

“I usually name the book after one of the stories, and that one seemed to sound the best and to suggest the overall tone of the book,” Saunders said in an email. “I like it when a title hints at the meaning of the book but doesn’t knock the reader over the head with a narrow and specific interpretation.”

Etgar Keret, a short-story writer who incorporates a great sense of humor into his pieces, will be the next speaker in the series. He will be doing a reading and Q-and-A session on Oct. 9 in Gifford Auditorium. Poet David Baker will follow Keret’s presentation on Oct. 16.

Poet Stephen Dunn, who received a master’s degree in creative writing from Syracuse in 1970, will be reading and answering questions on Nov. 13. Then, on Nov. 20, Cheryl Strayed, a 2002 Syracuse graduate, will be reading and discussing her bestselling memoir “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.”

The series concludes on Dec. 4 with Jane Springer, an assistant professor of English at Hamilton College, and poet whom coordinator of “Living Writers” Sarah Harwell said, “is a great poet who is different from both David Baker and Stephen Dunn.”

The series as a whole is a learning experience, but each individual lecture is meant to be engaging in its own right.

“I really just hope they have a good time and, in this way, get the feeling that literature is not something cold or separate from their real lives, but a living thing that can be essential to it. I also hope they get a few laughs out of it,” Saunders said in an email.

One student enrolled in “Living Writers,” Tatyana Laird, a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences, said she is looking forward to attending the author lectures because she is a fiction writer herself.

Said Laird: “I’m hoping to learn more about the process that modern-day writers go through to write their own stories because we have the opportunity to have them come talk to us about their work.”

Published on September 18, 2013 at 12:38 am

Contact Ian: ijromake@syr.edu