Instructor

Mary Anderson

Class Type 

Lit & Craft

Course Description

Annie Proulx is the author of eight books, including “The Shipping News” and the short story “Brokeback Mountain”, both of which were adapted into major motion pictures. She has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the O. Henry Award, and the Pen-Faulkner Award among many others.

Annie Proulx told an audience during her acceptance of the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction in 2018, that her main reason for writing stories is the examination of place. “I try to find out everything I can about it, who's been there before, what was (there) before anybody and put them all together because I strongly believe that place makes us what we are. It's extremely difficult to escape from your place.” She calls this her “recipe for story writing.”

In this course, we will travel back and forth across North America, from the coast of Newfoundland to the Range of Wyoming, immersing ourselves in Proulx’s characters and cultures to better understand our American landscape and its contribution to our stories.

Textbook

Close Range: Wyoming Stories
by Annie Proulx/ Hardcover
Scribner/1999
ISBN13-9780684852218
(Required)

Heart Songs and Other Stories
by Annie Proulx/Paperback
Scribner/1988,1999
ISBN13-9780020360759
(Required)

Postcards, A Novel
by Annie Proulx/Paperback
Scribner/ 1992
ISBN13-9780684800875
(Excerpts Provided)

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx/Paperback
Scribner/1994
ISBN13-9780671510053
(Excerpts Provided)

Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2
by Annie Proulx
Scribner/2004
ISBN13-978-0743260145
(Excerpts Provided)

Barkskins
By Annie Proulx
Scribner/2017
ISBN 13-9780743288798
(Excerpts Provided)