January 24, 2010

"From Silk Thread to Steel Cable: Finding and Strengthening the Narrative in Fiction and Nonfiction"

Jason will be talking about what a narrative approach to a subject truly entails, and how the flow of the story can be discovered, evaluated, explored and optimized, with several real-life examples from both A SENSE OF THE WORLD and his current book in progress. He says, "I fully intend to give away the store, i.e., I won't be dispensing vague advice, but discussing stuff I wish someone had told me when I was starting out: real, specific techniques that can make a big difference in both fiction and nonfiction. This will be a peer-driven, craftsperson-to-craftsperson discussion that will ultimately be about YOUR work, not mine, so come prepared to ask questions, and to focus on the practices and processes that are relevant to you."

Jason Roberts, Author of A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History’s Greatest Traveler.
http://jasonroberts.net/books/a-sense-of-the-world/

Jason Roberts's most recent work, A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History’s Greatest Traveler (HarperCollins), was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award, longlisted for the international Guardian First Book Award, and named a Best Book of the Year by the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle and Kirkus Reviews. He is also the inaugural winner of the Van Zorn Prize for emerging fiction writers, sponsored by Michael Chabon, and a contributor to McSweeney’s, The Believer, the Village Voice and other publications.

Born in Southern California, Roberts earned his high school diploma at fourteen, then took a five-year hiatus from education. He worked as a day laborer, dishwasher and late-night disc jockey before matriculating at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he graduated with a degree in English literature.

In addition to his writing, Roberts has also received acclaim for his work in new media. He is the founder of Learn2.com, the pioneering online education company named by Yahoo! as “one of the twelve most important websites of the 20th century.” He is also the author of several instructional texts on multimedia programming.

Roberts is currently at work on two books: a nonfiction narrative, centered on the opening of Japan in 1853, and a novel set in Northern California and post-unification Germany.

He lives in Sausalito, California, with his wife, a chemical engineer, and their two young children. His office in downtown San Francisco is part of the Grotto, the nonprofit workspace cooperative of writers, filmmakers and other narrative artists.