Sailing the Inland Sea On Writing, Literature, and Land [Paperback]

Calling on the image of the Midwests vanished inland sea, Susan Neville has written a compelling collection of essays that ponder writing and the landlocked imagination. The essays range from interviews with Indiana writers Kurt Vonnegut, Scott Sanders, Marguerite Young, and others, to discussions on techniques grounded in a Midwestern sensibility. As director of Butler Universitys Visiting Writers Series, Neville has had the rare opportunity to converse with such literary giants as Salman Rushdie, Ray Bradbury, and Toni Morrison, and some of those exchanges have been incorporated into this exciting new collection.

Susan Neville is a native Hoosier and professor of English and creative writing at Butler University. Her books include Indiana Winter (IUP, 1994), Falling Toward Grace: Images of Religion and Culture from the Heartland (edited with J. Kent Calder) (IUP, 1998), and Iconography: A Writers Meditation (IUP, 2003). She is also on the faculty of the Warren Wilson Program for Writers in North Carolina. She lives in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Contents<\>
Introduction
1. On the Banks of Lost River
2. Where the Landscape Moved Like Waves: An Interview with Marguerite Young
3. River of Spirit: An Interview with Dan Wakefield
4. Sacred Space in Ordinary Time
5. Quaker Zen: On Jessamyn West's Friendly Persuasion
6. Vonnegut: An Interview with Kurt Vonnegut
7. Free Singers/Be: On Etheridge Knight
8. On Wildness and Domesticity: An Interview with Scott Russell Sanders
9. The Gospel According to Lish
10. Imagination
11. On Being Fierce
12. Monopoly Houses: On John McPhee's In Search of Marvin Gardens
13. Sailing the Sea in New Harmony Indiana: On Digression in Creative Nonfiction
14. Driving FamlÓ)