"Ideal for individual or classroom use, Architectures of Possibility theorizes and questions the often unconscious assumptions behind such traditional writing gestures as temporality, scene, and characterization; offers various suggestions for generating writing that resists, rethinks, and/or expands the very notion of narrativity; visits a number of important concerns/trends/obsessions in current writing (both on the page and off); discusses marketplace (ir)realities; hones critical reading and manuscript editing capabilities; and strengthens problem-solving muscles from brainstorming to literary activism.
Exercises and supplemental reading lists challenge authors to push their work into self-aware and surprising territory.
In addition, Architectures of Possibility features something entirely lacking in most books about creative writing: more than 40 interviews with contemporary innovative authors, editors, and publishers (including Robert Coover, Lydia Davis, Brian Evenson, Shelley Jackson, Ben Marcus, Carole Maso, Scott McCloud, Steve Tomasula, Deb Olin Unferth, Joe Wenderoth, and Lidia Yuknavitch) working in diverse media, providing significant insights into the multifaceted worlds of experimental authors' writing.
Lance Olsen is author of more than 20 books of and about innovative writing, including the novelsCalendar of Regrets, Head in Flames, and Nietzsche’s Kisses. His short stories, essays, poems, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals and anthologies, such as Conjunctions, Black Warrior Review, Fiction International, Village Voice, BOMB, McSweeney’s, and Best American Non-Required Reading. He serves as chair of FC2’s Board of Directors and teaches experimental narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah.
Collaborator Trevor Dodge is author of the novel Yellow #10 and short-fiction collection Everyone I know Lives on Roads, as well as co-editor of the Northwest Edge anthologies of experimental narrative. He teaches writing, literature, comics, and games studies at Clackamas Community College in Oregon Cityand the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland."
In March 2012, Architectures of Possibility will officially debut at the annual AWP Convention in Chicago.