This summer, we’re thrilled to host nonfiction writer Barrett Swanson as on of our four Priory Writers’ Retreat writers-in residence! When you are accepted into The Priory, you’ll have the option to schedule a personal one-on-one session with Barrett!
Barrett Swanson is a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine. He was the recipient of a 2015 Pushcart Prize, and his short fiction and essays have been distinguished as notable in Best American Short Stories (2019), Best American Nonrequired Reading (2014), Best American Essays (2014, 2015, 2017, and 2019) and Best American Sports Writing (2017).
Read on for a mini-interview with Barrett!
1.) What about The Priory are you most excited about?
“Because writing retreats usually take place over the span of four or five days, they always end up being these concentrated spurts of inspiration and camaraderie where conversations are rich and meaning-laden and where you get right down to the essence of things. Artistically, it’s a jolt to the temples and leaves me feeling more awake to possibility.”
Talking with the attendees and reading their essays. Because writing retreats usually take place over the span of four or five days, they always end up being these concentrated spurts of inspiration and camaraderie where conversations are rich and meaning-laden and where you get right down to the essence of things. Artistically, it's a jolt to the temples and leaves me feeling more awake to possibility.
2.) Can you share a bit about a mentor or writing experience that helped shape your own work?
For fear of offering a maudlin portrait of my high school English teacher (the wonderful Mrs. Keane!) or offering a stale writerly bromide ("getting rejected from that magazine taught me that, in this business, perseverance is important," etc.), I will instead share an anecdote about a writer whom I admire. Delillo says somewhere that he's obsessed with how words look on a page and will alter sentences so that the very shape of the letters in a single phrase will be evocative of the emotion he is trying to conjure. I seem to recall that he wrote one of his books entirely on notecards, the diminutive size of which forced him to focus on a little crop of sentences before moving onto the next. Doing so ensured that he could pumice down each clause and mold all the words' shapes to his liking. I mention this because the possible neurosis of his practice has allowed me to feel more comfortable in my own oddball habits, about which (nice try) I will end public discussion here.
3.) What are you reading these days?
I'm reading The Triumph of The Therapeutic by Phillip Reiff and Fragments of an Infinite Memory by Maël Renouard.