“Thomas Wolfe & the Creative Process”

Call for Papers!

For its 38th annual conference, the Thomas Wolfe Society invites papers exploring Wolfe’s experience of & relationship to the creative process: his own writing process; the inspiration he derived from travel, from art, from reading; the transformation of memory, experience, or imagination into narrative. Influence or inspiration from nature, history, philosophy, politics, science & other disciplines may also be explored, as well as Wolfe’s influence on other artists’ creative process.

Proposals on any theme related to Wolfe & the Creative Process–or on any theme related to Wolfe and his work–are also welcome.

Please send 250-word paper proposals by January 10, 2016 to TWS Vice President Rebecca L. Godwin @ [email protected].

“The words were wrung out of him in a kind of bloody sweat, they poured out of his finger tips, spat out of his snarling throat like writhing snakes; he wrote them with his heart, his brain, his sweat, his guts; he wrote them with his blood, his spirit; they were wrenched out of the last secret source and substance of his life.”

In The Story of a Novel, Wolfe gives a somewhat more measured account of his own creative process than the above evocation of Eugene Gant’s romantic agony from Of Time and the River. The later discussion, revealing a mature writer who has come to grips with “the necessity of daily work,” provides insight into Wolfe’s quest for language to express his vision and for the means “to organize his material into a harmonious and coherent union.”

We gather for the 2016 meeting in Wolfe’s hometown. Wolfe’s final visit to Asheville, his first since 1929, occurred in summer 1937. Seeking a peaceful place to write, he stayed in a friend’s cabin at Oteen, then about five miles from town but now within city limits. There, despite the interruptions of visitors wanting to see the famous author, he worked on revising “The Party at Jack’s” before he moved, in secret, to the Battery Park Hotel, a few blocks from the Old Kentucky Home, in search of privacy for his creative work.

For its 38th annual conference, the Thomas Wolfe Society invites papers exploring Wolfe’s experience of and relationship to the creative process: his own writing process; the inspiration he derived from travel, from art, from reading; the transformation of memory, experience, or imagination into narrative. Influence or inspiration from nature, history, philosophy, politics, science, and other disciplines may also be explored, as well as Wolfe’s influence on other artists’ creative process. Proposals on any theme related to Wolfe and the Creative Process—or on any theme related to Wolfe and his work—are also welcome.

Please send 250-word paper proposals by January 10, 2016, to Rebecca L. Godwin at [email protected].