MFA Greensboro Alum Steve Almond Interviewed about the State of American Writing

The Situation in American Writing
In 1939, The Partisan Review sent out a questionnaire to a number of prominent writers, asking them about literature, politics and their identities. While the questionnaire hasn’t been completely forgotten, we felt that these specifically political questions were rarely being asked of our writers. Considering that 2011 was a year of global unrest, we felt that it would be particularly relevant to update The Partisan Review’s questions. (For the curious, here are the original questions.) 

Steve Almond is an author, journalist,  and commentator. His work has appeared in Playboy, Zoetrope, Ploughshares and Ecotone. His newest short story collection is God Bless America.

2011 was the year of the Arab Spring. There have also been massive protests in Greece, Spain, Britain, and most recently, the United States. Does literature have a responsibility to respond to popular upheaval?

Oh gosh. I’m not sure that it’s fair, or even wise, to ask artists to “respond to popular upheaval.” In a sense, we should all be responding to what’s happening in the world around us. We all have that moral duty. Literature’s essential moral duty is to make us feel more than we did before, to induce the radical empathy that helps us imagine the suffering and exaltation of other human beings. It’s not about what’s on the news so much as our attitude toward the news.

Read the full article here: http://www.full-stop.net/2012/01/11/features/the-editors/the-situation-in-american-writing-steve-almond/

Find out more about the MFA Writing Program here:http://mfagreensboro.org