In Conversation With
Mary Ruefle -
with Jo Bell
At The Writing School we're always keen to learn from the best and this month we've been delighted to be able to interview the giant of American letters - Mary Ruefle (linked at the bottom of this text).
Mary Ruefle is the author of many books, including Dunce (Wave Books, 2019), which was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize, longlisted for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics’ Circle Award.
She is also the author of numerous collections, but Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures (winner of the William Carlos Williams Award) has become a modern classic across the English speaking world. It is known as required reading for anyone who wants to write poetry.
Ruefle is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Robert Creeley Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and a Whiting Award. She lives in Bennington, Vermont, where she serves as the state’s poet laureate.
In an insightful, funny and sometimes profound interview Ruefle talks to the leading UK poet and literary thinker Jo Bell. The discussion is a delight throughout and a perfect primer for poets of all levels of experience. The American poet offer brilliant thoughts on the importance of doing nothing, her relationship with technology, whether she's writing poetry or prose.
A recording can be accessed through the button below.
To read a transcript of the interview please click the button below.
The Book is available now from Wave Publishing - click the image above to go straight to their website.
Subscribers to The Writing School newsletter will be emailed a 30% discount code to enjoy the book at a special discount price.
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About Jo Bell
Mary Ruefle's interviewer is the amazing Jo Bell. She is one of the UK's best-respected poetry coaches, whose best-sellers 52: write a poem a week and How To Be a Poet (with Jane Commane) have transformed the writing practice of thousands.
An award-winning poet and former director of National Poetry Day, Jo is now the host of online community The Poetic Licence, and of podcast Three Poems and a Question.
Her November workshop for The Writing School sold out in days and we're delighted to say she will back with more dynamic teaching in 2024.
Copyright for the interview and text is retained by Mary Ruefle, Wave Books, Jo Bell and The Writing School.