September 6, 2018, Thursday - David Mura Book Launch: A Stranger's Journey at The Loft at Open Book

Time: 7 – 8:30 pm

Location: The Loft at Open Book (Performance Hall),1011 Washington Avenue

David Mura Book Launch: A Stranger's Journey

Long recognized as a master teacher at writing programs like VONA and the Loft, David Mura has written a book on creative writing which addresses our increasingly diverse American literature. Mura argues for a more inclusive and expansive definition of craft, particularly in relationship to race, even as he elucidates timeless rules of narrative construction in fiction and memoir. In A Stranger’s Journey, Mura poses two central questions. The first involves identity: How is writing an exploration of who one is and one’s place in the world? Mura examines how the myriad identities in our changing contemporary canon have led to new challenges regarding both craft and pedagogy. The book’s second central question involves structure: How does one tell a story? Mura provides clear, insightful narrative tools that any writer may use, taking in techniques from fiction, screenplays, playwriting and myth. He also candidly explores the newly evolved aesthetic principles of memoir and how questions of identity occupy a central place in contemporary memoir. $10 ($5 members).