Kevin Oderman
Professor of English
PhD University of California at Santa Barbara
Office: 140 Colson Hall
Office Tel: 304.293.9728
Home Tel: 304.293.5618
Fax: 304.293.5380
Read Kevin's work.Specialization:
Creative Writing: Literary Essay, Travel, Novel
Academic: Modern and Early Postmodern American Poetry
Courses Taught:
214: Creative Writing: Nonfiction
318: Creative Writing Workshop: Nonfiction
Undergraduate American Literature courses
418: Creative Writing Capstone
618: Graduate Creative Writing Workshop: Nonfiction
Books:
White Vespa, Etruscan Press, 2012
Going (novel), Vandalia Press, 2006.
How Things Fit Together (literary essays), Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference 1999 Bakeless Literary Publication Prize for Nonfiction, Middlebury Press, 1999.
Ezra Pound and the Erotic Medium (criticism), Duke University Press, 1987.
Monograph
Lloyd Goldsmith Looking Downtown, Square Moon (in response to painting), 2009.
Reviews:
“Going is a brilliant novel—a deft, contemplative thriller that probes five lives united by art, chance, and exile. The story’s great themes are the erotic, artistic integrity, and death. Its genders are crossed or at war, its night streets and romances equally treacherous, its wit delightfully dark. Yet the engagements with art are profound. And the climax—a stunner—is suffused with justice and light.”
David James Duncan
On How Things Fit Together
“Although the universe holds together faithfully, our own precious lives seem to scatter like blown leaves. How to bind up one’s memories, yearnings, travels, scraps of knowledge, loves and lamentations into a coherent whole? That is Kevin Oderman’s great theme in these compelling essays. He joins piece to piece with a poet’s feel for elegant language and a carpenter’s feel for sturdy joints. He’s at ease outdoors as well as indoors—fishing in rivers as well as books, hunting in the wilds as well as museums. While Oderman writes of his private journeys in search of coherence, he also invites his readers to think about the fissures and patterns in their own lives.”
Scott Russell Sanders
Publications:
“Of Corse,” Tusculum Review, 5, (2009) 83-102.
“Colors,” Green Mountains Review, 23, No. 1 (2009) 98-109.
“Cloudband,” Northwest Review 46, No. 2 (2008) 122-41.
“White Amber,” Northwest Review 45, No. 2 (2007) 36-50.
“Time to Kill: Cambodia,” Southwest Review 92, No. 3 (2007) 463-80.
“A House Fitting,” Southwest Review, 90, No. 3 (2005) 412-27.
“Selling,” North Dakota Quarterly, 72, No. 4 (2005) 75-86.
“Judith and Harold,” Northwest Review, 43, No. 3 (2005) 73-86.
“Puppet Heads,” Northwest Review, 42, No. 3 (2004) 58-76.
“Waiting for the Bombs,” Northwest Review, 40, No. 3 (2002) 114-26.
Awards:
Bakeless Prize in Nonfiction
Fellowships:
Fulbright Fellowship to Thessaloniki, Greece
Fulbright Fellowship to Lahore, Pakistan
Links:
Kevin is married to writer Sara Pritchard. Visit her website.
Kevin Admires:
Contemporary essayists: John Haines, William Kittredge, W.G. Sebald, Guy Davenport, Trudy Dittmar, JoAnn Beard, Rachel Cohen, Franklin Burroughs, John Berger, David James Duncan, Rebecca Solnit.
Not-so-contemporary essayists: Emerson & Thoreau.
Novelists & poets who have informed my writing: Heimito von Doderer, Andre Gide, Michel Tournier, Lawrence Durrell, Nikos Kazantzakis, Thomas Mann, Hugo von Hoffmansthal, Hermann Broch, Junichiro Tanizaki, Shusaku Endo, Ryokan, Basho, Issa, R.H. Blythe, Fernando Pessoa, St.-John Perse, Georg Trakl, William Carlos Williams, H.D., Ezra Pound, George Oppen, William Bronk, Per Petterson, Kent Haruf, Norman Maclean, Ian McEwan
Favorite filmmakers: Krzysztof Kieslowski, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Tom Tykwer, Jane Campion, Billy August, Peter Weir, Wim Wenders, Sally Potter
On a Personal Note:
I sometimes look with a camera:
