Wiping sweat, adjusting our sunhats in an historic heatwave, we stop at the site of the Cock and Hoop on Artillery Lane in the east London neighborhood of Spitalfields. It’s a shell of an eighteenth-century wall, window-arches of stone and empty air. A modern tower block (housing for the London School of Economics) is butted […]
Read moreEnglish Monsters and amazing students.
This January, students and I were supposed to be in London and Haworth and Whitby, tracking Frankenstein’s Creature and Dracula and Heathcliff and Mr. Hyde. Instead we were in a classroom on campus, a beloved old building with a sloping floor, a harmless ghost named Gertrude (according to student legend), and a whanging, banging monster […]
Read moreBlake and Kae Tempest: Seeing “People’s Faces” with students (Nov. 28)
On Nov. 28, I’ll take part via Zoom in The Blake Society’s special event to celebrate the launch of its journal VALA’s new issue – which includes my short piece on teaching Blake’s “London” alongside current Blake Society president Kae Tempest’s spoken-word poem “People’s Faces” – over Zoom on Dec. 21, 2020. It was, and […]
Read moreOn Notebooks and Screens (from textbook-in-progress)
Excerpt from Ch. 2 of Advanced Fiction Writing: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (forthcoming in 2023 from Bloomsbury Academic) Getting It Down: Writerly Self-Organizing, From Mind to Page “So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take […]
Read moreInterviewed by fellow writing teacher Christian Smith at RUMINATE Magazine.
Delighted to share the publication of this interview with me about writing practices (and much more) by fellow writing teacher Christian Smith, up now at RUMINATE Magazine: https://www.ruminatemagazine.com/blogs/ruminate-blog/alone-with-the-work-a-conversation-with-amy-e-weldon
Read more“Craft, Violence, and the Art of Storytelling”
For the Greensboro (NC) Bound Literary Festival – happening now! – my good friend Bryan Giemza and I are pleased to be in conversation with writers Dennis McCarthy, Rod Davis, and John Hart about violence, storytelling, the South, and the ins and outs of thrillers and literary fiction. Check out the event online here: https://greensborobound.com/events/davis-hart-mccarthy/ […]
Read moreKeats in the pandemic.
To many of us, the year 2020 felt like the first draft of apocalypse. The COVID-19 pandemic claimed nearly two million dead worldwide. Lockdown life drove minds and economies around the bend. George Floyd was murdered by a policeman on a Minneapolis sidewalk. Brexit disaster flapped down on rusty wings to roost on the once-United […]
Read moreTinfoil Mary, “strong women,” and stays against confusion.
Left: The great writer. Right: Her tinfoil avatar. “I was hoping for a great memorial to Mary Wollstonecraft…this isn’t it.” – Historian Simon Schama I’m sure everyone involved meant well. I can’t wait to see how my next crop of “In Frankenstein’s Footsteps” study-abroad students will react to it [in a post-COVID J-term 2022 — […]
Read more“So much time to write?”: Sabbatical-ing in the pandemic (for our college magazine).
In August 2019, an alarming number clarified my mission in life. “How Much Hotter Is Your Hometown Than When You Were Born?” asked a New York Times infographic. “As the world warms because of human-induced climate change, most of us can expect to see more days when temperatures hit 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius) […]
Read moreAn Awful Rainbow: possible introduction, part 2.
Possible introduction, continued, to An Awful Rainbow: Reading the Romantics in a World on Fire. Read Part One here. *** We Frankenstein pilgrims came home to a year that only got scarier. First, there was barely-averted war with Iran. The presidential caucus – Iowa’s pride and joy – came apart in our hands. Then the […]
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