Podcast

K.L. Cook, THE ART OF DISOBEDIENCE & A Quarantine Poem

We spend the hour with writing teacher K.L. Cook, talking about about the art and craft of writing and his book, The Art Of Disobedience: Essays on Form, Fiction, and Influence.

In the book’s essays, he explores why secrets are at the heart of every story; why point of view is perhaps the most important decision a fiction writer can make and why disobedience to the rules is the critical secret sauce to great writing.

We also read a poem by Jessica Salfia about quarantine in the age of Covid19.

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K. L. Cook
K. L. Cook has been teaching writing for a long time. An award-winning writer himself, He is Professor of English and Co-Coordinator of the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Environment at Iowa State University. He’s also a longtime faculty member of the low-residency MFA Program in Writing at Spalding University.

Cook has distilled some of the most important lessons he’s learned about the art of writing fiction in his new book, The Art of Disobedience. In the book’s essays, he explores issues of aesthetics, craft, form, process, influence, and what it means to spend a life in letters.

Among those explorations is why secrets are at the heart of every story; why point of view is perhaps the most important decision a fiction writer can make and why disobedience to the rules is the critical secret sauce to great writing.

K. L. Cook is the author of six books of fiction, poetry, and essays, including Last Call, The Girl from Charnelle, and Love Songs for the Quarantined. In addition to The Art Of Disobedience, he’s out with two other recent books: Marrying Kind, a collection of short stories, and a collection of poetry, Lost Soliloquies.

POEM: First Lines of emails I’ve received while quarantining by Jessica Salfia

About Francesca Rheannon

Francesca Rheannon is an award-winning independent radio producer. In addition to hosting Writer's Voice, she's a freelance reporter for National Public Radio and its affiliates. Recipient of the prestigious Nancy Dickerson Whitehead Award for reporting on substance abuse issues for her news series, VOICES OF HIV, produced for 88.5 WFCR public radio in western Massachusetts. She is also finishing a book on Provence (PROVINCE OF THE HEART) and working on a memoir of her father, THE ARGONAUTS.