Mitchell Jackson Craft Talk—Voice in Prose

One of the most effective ways in fiction to, as Susan Sontag says, “preserve the works of the mind against oblivion,” is to craft a distinctive voice. Voice is made up of qualities that include diction and structural choices, syntactical usage, and a mindfulness of the acoustics of the language. This lecture will include examples of eloquent voice, as well as expound on tools for creating one.

Mitchell S. Jackson’s debut novel, The Residue Years, was praised by publications including The New York Times, The Paris Review, and The Times of London. Jackson is the winner of a Whiting Award. His novel also won The Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence and was a finalist for the Center for Fiction’s Flaherty-Dunnan First novel prize, the PEN/ Hemingway award for first fiction, and the Hurston / Wright Legacy Award. Jackson’s honors include fellowships from TED, the Lannan Foundation, the BreadLoaf Conference, and the Center for Fiction. His writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times Book Review, Salon, and Tin House. He serves on the faculty at New York University and Columbia University.