Episode 91: SWC 06: Tim O’Brien & Speer Morgan

February 25, 2020

The second summer of conversations recorded at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference continues with Tim O’Brien, who tells James about winning the National Book Award, writing THE THINGS THEY CARRIED while on a break from another book, not leaving a sentence until it’s finished, being a father, knowing death, and recognizing the maybeness of it all. Plus, Missouri Review editor Speer Morgan.     

Sewanee Writers Conference: 2020 Applications due March 15!

Tim O’Brien 

Buy Tim O’Brien’s Books From Independent Booksellers

Tim and James discuss: 

Sewanee Writers’ Conference 

Dan O’Brien 

Christine Schutt 

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP by John Irving 

THE STORIES OF JOHN CHEEVER by John Cheever 

Lizzie Borden 

Jack the Ripper 

“A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor 

“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” by Joyce Carol Oates 

WAR AND PEACE by Leo Tolstoy 

THE BIBLE 

BILLY BUDD, SAILOR by Herman Melville 

Wyatt Prunty 

Emily Nemens 

Ernest Hemingway 

Speer Morgan

Speer and James discuss: 

Middlebury College 

The New England Review 

Greg Michaelson 

Jack Kerouac 

Mark Twain 

Tennessee Williams 

Christine Schutt 

The Dead Sea Scrolls 

Kris Somerville’s Curio Cabinet 

Mike McClaskey

Dan O’Brien 

“Fields of Empire” by Joan Silber 

Daniel Woodrell

Susan Vreeland 

Joanna Scott 

Raymond Carver 

Robert Olen Butler 

Naguib Mahfouz

Gregory Rabassa 

Philip K. Dick 

Ursula Le Guin 

Russell Banks 

PBS 

Henry Green

Robert Bly 

Stephen Dunn 

TR Hummer 

Dave Smith 

Annie Proulx

Edmund White 

Ernest Gaines 

Larry Brown 

John Updike 

Margaret Walker 

Peter Matthiessen 

Richard Ford 

“Awakening to Jake” by Jillian Weiss 

Henry James 

Edith Wharton 

CHERNOBYL 

“Snow” by Kermit Frazier 

A FAITHFUL BUT MELANCHOLY ACCOUNT OF SEVERAL BARBARITIES LATELY COMMITTED by Jason Brown

“Those Deep Elm Brown’s Ferry Blues” by William Gay 

Music courtesy of Bea Troxel from her album, THE WAY THAT IT FEELS

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