Hello, Wisconsin!: Writing Place with David John Paradise

In the words of Midwestern writer Andrew Scott, “Character emerges from place. So much emerges from place, actually. A writer can mine much from a given locale: narrative voice, metaphors large and small, characters, conflict, and more.” No author better practiced this than Glenway Wescott, Wisconsin’s own forgotten member of the famous group of writers who later became known as the “Lost Generation.” This group included such writers as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, the latter of whom made Wescott a minor character in his classic novel of 1920s Paris, The Sun Also Rises.

Over the course of this 90-minute session, through close reading in Wescott’s landmark collection Goodbye, Wisconsin, participants will learn how character emerges from place and will perform writing exercises that practice establishing place in their own work.

David John Paradise is a short story writer born and raised in Milwaukee but educated in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, studying psychology at Washington and Lee University and receiving his MFA in creative writing from Hollins. His fiction has been supported by the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and draws not only from his experience in the world of psychological science, but also from his home state of Wisconsin where he is thrilled to return for the Write On, Door County residency.