Patricia Foster Reading
Patricia Foster reads two excerpts from her book of essays entitled Just Beneath My Skin: Autobiography and Self-Discovery. Foster, a professor in the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa, discusses her take on the memoir or personal essay. She acknowledges academics’ disdain for the memoir form, yet she strongly feels that it is a strong enough form to warrant its own genre. During a question and answer session, Foster discusses her writing process, confessing that it takes her a very long time to write and edit a collection. She points out that she hopes in the near future to move past the memoir form and write about other individuals, claiming, “I think I’ve run out of my own stories.”
When asked to describe the difference between an essay and a short story, Foster claims that an essay is essentially a “nonfiction short story.” Foster further explains her belief that the conventions of storytelling can be used in the nonfiction form. She goes on to relay the pressure she feels as a native Southerner to master the art of storytelling, claiming that sometimes she felt like she was “just repeating the masters of fiction.”
In: "Live from Prairie Lights" Audio Archive | Nonfiction
Authors: Patricia Foster
Date Recorded: November 05, 2004
Works Read: "Skin" and "The Intelligent Heart" from Just Beneath My Skin: Autobiography and Self-Discovery by Patricia Foster
Program: Live From Prairie Lights
Format: reading
Contributors: Introduction by host Julie Englander.
Topics: memoir, nonfiction, storytelling, Southern culture, writing process