ARDEN 2002 by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: art, photography, short stories, prose, poetry, fiction
Published: 2002-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

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April Cook

Graveyard at Sunset

Josh Camp

Untitled

Josh Camp

Untitled

Margaret Edson On Creative Composition

Margaret Edson, author of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize winning play Wit, visited and spoke at Columbus State University in March of 2002 in honor of Women's History month. Edson graduated from Smith College, magna cum laude, with a degree in Renaissance history. She returned to school in 1991, on a full scholarship to Georgetown University, and earned her masters degree in English.

Edson spent six years teaching English as a second language and a subsequent year as a first grade teacher in Washington, DC. Currently, she teaches kindergarten in Atlanta, GA.

Wit takes us into the mind of English professor Vivian Bearing. Bearing has used her knack for biting wit as an educational tool and a defense mechanism throughout her life and career Made vulnerable by her medical struggles after she is diagnosed with cancer, she realizes that she can no longer hide behind this wit and slowly lets those around her, the audience, and, most importantly, herself realize and experience the beauty of the naked soul.

Wit was written in 1991 and premiered at South Coast Repertory in 1995. receiving many honors and awards, including the Pulitzer Prize in 1999 Wit was transferred from the stage to screen when HBO produced the play as a movie directed by Mike Nichols and starring Academy award winner Emma Thompson

Edson's talk was part ofCSU's celebration of Women's History month, as welt as the finale to an evening dedicated to CSU's own women of achievement. During her stay in Columbus, Edson kindly agreed to meet with me and answer a few cpiestions for The Arden. Over pancakes, she shared with me the process of creative composition that gax'e literary form to a few sparks of inspiration during the creation of Wit.

Margaret Edson on the process of creative composition:

Writing is horrible. It's hard. It's lonely. It's frustrating. Anyone who wants to be a writer wants to have written. You don't want to do the work, but you want to have a book signing at a book shop. You want to have your pie ture on the jacket. The work of writing is horrible, hard work. And so, let me

dissuade any of your readers from dreaming of a career as a writer. Do soma thing else.

The process for me is hours and hours of serious hard research and then five seconds of inspiration. And then days and days and days of research, and then these scenes would just pop into my mind. And then weeks of research, and then a whole exchange was clear in my mind.

So what the research was doing was supplying me with the factual knowledge that I needed, but it was also turning me into the kind of person who would be available to get the kind of ideas that were needed. So I couldn't have a group of or sparks of ideas about the doctor's relationship with Professor Bearing unless I knew a lot about doctors and the way they are trained and what a medical history is really like.

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