Novelist Snowden Wright to Read at The Mount

Snowden Wright

Snowden Wright

(LENOX, Mass.) – Stone Court Writer-in-Residence Snowden Wright – the author of Play Pretty Blues: A Novel of the Life of Robert Johnson — will read from his work at The Mount on Saturday, May 9, 2015, at 3pm. The reading is free and open to the public

Part researched reconstruction, part vivid imagination, Play Pretty Blues brings blues legend Robert Johnson alive through the voices of his six wives, revealing the husband and son inside the legend, illuminating the vacuum Johnson left in the worlds of those who loved him and those he would never meet.

Snowden Wright hails from Oxford, Miss. He holds a BA in creative writing from Dartmouth College and an MFA in fiction writing from Columbia University. His nonfiction work has been published in Salon, TheAtlantic.com, Nerve, The Morning News, Freerange Nonfiction, Thought Catalog, The Good Men Project, Esquire.com, Bookslut, The Millions, and the New York Daily News. His fiction has been published in Dark Sky, The Rumpus, TheLMagazine.com, Emprise Review, elimae, and Vol. 1 Brooklyn. Wright was the 2012 recipient of the Summer Literary Seminar’s Graywolf Prize for best novel excerpt.

Snowden Wright PPB-Book-Cover_Low-Resolution1From a young age, Wright has been an avid reader, and early realized that he wanted to write stories like the ones he read. He began his first novel in second grade, a story, by his own account, that was “a terrible book.” He wrote little in high school but elected to major in creative writing as an undergraduate at Dartmouth College.

Wright also calls his thesis novel a “terrible book.” Ten years later, when he next stood in the room in which he had given a reading from his thesis novel, however, it was to read from his first published novel, Play Pretty Blues, a fictional account of the blues musician Robert Johnson, told from the perspective of Johnson’s six surviving wives. Will Allison, author of Long Drive Home, says, “Wright’s fervent, musical prose captures the very essence of the blues. [This is] a work of extraordinary imagination and soul.”

The reading is cosponsored by the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, the Berkshire Waldorf High School, the Stockbridge Library Museum and Archives, and The Mount. There will be refreshments.

The Stone Court Writer-In-Residence is in its inaugural year and is co-sponsored by the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation and the Berkshire Waldorf High School. The Stone Court Writer-In-Residence program offers two 12-week residencies, one beginning in September and one beginning in February. It provides emerging writers need: the freedom, time, and material support to concentrate on their creative work. Further, it is focused on bringing to the Berkshire Hills in young writers who represent diverse American voices, particularly those from other regions of the United States. Finally, it is structured to permit the writer to contribute to the community by leading a creative writing “master class” at the Berkshire Waldorf High School and offering community readings of his or her work.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.