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Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance Interview, <\/mark><\/strong><\/span>for 2018 Literary Arts Award in Playwriting<\/mark><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n What inspired you to step away from nonfiction and environmental writing and towards playwriting? What were your biggest challenges in tackling a different genre?\u00a0<\/strong> So I found the experience a good one for turning into a play, and as a writing experience, I found writing dialogue liberating \u2013 no, or very little, exposition!\u00a0 In reading and attending plays, I think I gradually came to appreciate the power of the simplicity of a play:\u00a0 characters\u2019 words and actions in regard to one another.\u00a0 That\u2019s powerful, and fun to write, especially as a novice playwright.\u00a0 It\u2019s a much different imaginative experience, to write a play rather than prose, than I would have thought before I gave it a try.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n What advice do you give your students about writing?<\/strong> I also set out some principles, especially about honesty, truth, and vulnerability in nonfiction.\u00a0 One of those principles is that the writer has absolute authority to choose whatever story he or she wants to tell, but whatever they choose, they have to be willing to be honest about it.\u00a0 This comes up a lot when someone writes about a difficult or sensitive topic; they don\u2019t have to write about it, but if they choose to, they have to go all the way, not hold back.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n I also advise them to take risks, even if the result doesn\u2019t work out.\u00a0 That\u2019s hard for students to hear, because of course they are eventually graded, and they care too much about grades.<\/p>\r\n\r\n When you\u2019re not teaching or writing, what do you enjoy doing most?<\/strong> Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance Interview, for 2018 Literary Arts Award in Playwriting What inspired you to step away from nonfiction and environmental writing and towards playwriting? What were your biggest challenges in tackling a different genre?\u00a0I think I was mostly inspired by the experience of going to Wilton\u2019s town meeting many times over the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":261,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"full-width-content","footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mdburke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/197"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mdburke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mdburke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mdburke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/261"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mdburke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mdburke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":500,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mdburke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/197\/revisions\/500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mdburke\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
I think I was mostly inspired by the experience of going to Wilton\u2019s town meeting many times over the years, and realizing eventually what a drama\u2013 of a certain sort \u2013 unfolds there. Town meetings have all the requirements of drama:\u00a0 characters, conflict, tension and resolution, and a surface topic beneath which other subjects lurk.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
I give them plenty of advice, more than they want!\u00a0 In my creative nonfiction classes, I focus on helping them understand what the tools of nonfiction are, the devices, and how to employ them. Quite often they\u2019ve seen the tools used on the page, they\u2019ve witnessed them being put into action, but they need to have the craft elements named, and called to their attention, and they need suggestions on how they might use this or that tool on this or that occasion.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
As the owner of an old house in Maine, I spend a\u00a0lot\u00a0of time working on it; I\u2019m not sure that counts as enjoyment.\u00a0 But other than that, my wife and I like being in Europe, perhaps at an artist residency, and we have a camp nearby, where I like to swim and float on an old air mattress.\u00a0 I still like to run for exercise, competing occasionally in 5Ks and 10Ks, and to bike and use Colby\u2019s gym.\u00a0 I try to stay up to date on environmental literature, ecocriticism, and the environmental humanities.\u00a0 I also spend a lot of time fuming about politics and the fate of the country.<\/p>\r\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mdburke\/files\/2023\/10\/rocks-and-ice-scaled-e1697136607804-300x225.jpeg\")
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