If you did the author interview/bio for your Anthology...
A draft of the interview is due Mon, Nov 30 and final draft is due Dec 4th. A blog post naming the author and briefly reflecting on the product and process is due Mon, Dec 7th by 8pm. Blog post minimum 150 words; skip a line between paragraphs.
I wrote my fake interview with Gwendolyn Brooks. The piece I have by her in my anthology is her poem "A Song in the Front Yard". This project took quite a lot of researching. I started by doing some over all research to just get some ideas. Then I did research to answer each of the questions in the interview. Writing my own questions about specific works and finding the answers was the hardest part for me. I didn't know this author and the only writing of her's that I had read was the one poem so I had to do some reading to figure out questions to ask. One of the questions was about her poem "The Mother". Writing her answer from her perspective was a little more challenging for me. This was because the poem is an antiabortion poem which is not something I necessarily agree with so I had to write from a perspective I didn't believe. Over all this project helped me learn a lot about Gwendolyn Brooks that I never would have learned other wise.
ReplyDeleteWhen I wrote about Armando Valladares, my intent was first to write about a different author who had been imprisoned in Cuba and who my sister had tried to help when she was in college. When I started to search online, however, I came across Armando. At the time, the class was doing a poetry unit and Armando was a poet, so I felt him pulling at me. I researched him and discovered that he had been imprisoned for political reasons. My abuelo - my grandfather - was also imprisoned in Castro’s Cuba for taking a stand against the government. He was tortured, as was Armando. Fortunately, my abuelo was only imprisoned for a couple of months. Armando was imprisoned for a good part of his life. Fortunately, both my grandfather and Armando ended up in the United States. During part of his time in prison, Armando was in a wheelchair because of nerve damage suffered during a hunger strike. Armando’s poetry describes his life in prison including what it was like to be confined to a wheelchair. He describes the death of friends and the indignities he suffered as well as the physical trauma. I found his poetry very moving.
ReplyDeleteHi Mikey,
DeleteI really like what you wrote here, and on your actual author interview project. Firstly, I found the story of how you came to the decision to write about Armando Valladares for this project to be an interesting one. I particularly liked how you were able to make a personal connection to Valladares. Often times it is difficult to find someone who you can relate to at all, let alone find someone who has lived through similar struggles as a relative of yours like your abuelo, so I think it is very cool that you were able to do that. I found your writing for this project very moving.
For this project, I “interviewed” Robert frost. I chose to interview Frost because I feel that his poetry speaks to certain aspects of my life at this time. Primarily, I feel that I can relate to his writing that is about what life is like in New England, as it is where I live. In addition to that part of his writing, I feel that I can relate to some of his writing about life’s struggles, specifically about the feeling of isolation. Obviously Frost has experienced more of life’s struggles than I ever hope to, as he has lost multiple children, but I still feel that his writing speaks to some of my lesser issues. The poem of his that I included in my anthology is an example of this: “Acquainted with the Night” is a poem written by Frost about the feelings of sadness and isolation.
ReplyDeleteThis project actually took a lot more research than I expected; I almost needed a separate source for each question. However, thanks to the extra research I did, I learned much more about Robert Frost from this project than I thought I would. Overall, I found this project to be very enjoyable and interesting, much more so than the standard report format.
I also find Robert Frost’s writing to be relatable in terms of describing life in New England. While I have the fortune not relate too well to the part of his writing pertaining to loss, I can certainly understand how one might. I quite like the way you wrote your “interview with Robert Frost. It is concise and yet descriptive, and demonstrates that you put great effort into both researching and writing it. I also find your author-specific questions had very in-depth answers, which is, I think, probably the most important aspect of these interviews. You also did a good job writing the responses in a believable voice for the author.
DeleteI wrote my “Interview” on David Bowie. I chose Bowie because he is one of my favorite musicians, and I realized that I didn’t actually know much about his life, and that this would be as a good an opportunity as any to learn more. The process of researching and writing the “interview” was a fairly simple matter, albeit somewhat time consuming. For the general questions, that is. The author-specific questions were somewhat more difficult, as it was either a matter of taking what I had learned in my preliminary research and turning it into questions I could both write and answer, or coming up with questions I hadn’t found an answer to and finding more specific sources to answer them, neither of which were especially easy. I ended up doing a bit of both. I actually found some very interesting things while researching this “interview” that weren’t needed in the piece, but which I almost wish I could have fit. For instance, according to Biography.com, he “started his own mime troupe called Feathers”.
ReplyDeleteThis seems as though it was a very interesting person to have a fake interview with. Although he is not a personal favorite of mine when it comes to music, I realize that he was one of the more important figures in the world of music, and he was incredibly influential. I also agree that this process of finding information could be time consuming often, I found that it wasn't too hard to do when you pushed through it. I also did a fake interview. Much like you I found lots of extraneous information that would have been interesting to include, but it didn't have much use in the interview. From what you have written, you seem to have done a very good job with this!
DeleteI wrote my fake interview about Sir James M. Barrie. He wrote Peter Pan and I have an excerpt from the play in my anthology. I didn’t mind the research because I specifically made sure to find a person I was interested in. I enjoy the story of Peter Pan and I wanted to know more about the author and what inspired him to write it. Finding author specific questions wasn’t that hard. I read through some of my sources before creating the questions so I already had an idea for the answers. One thing that was challenging was writing from his perspective. Some of the questions had very vague answers so it was hard to create full answers. I had to go back and find another source in order to answer one of the questions. Another challenge was just putting the interview on my anthology website. I had a very hard time getting a picture of Sir James next to the title. Eventually I got it but that was probably the most frustrating part of this process. Overall, it was an interesting and fun project for me.
ReplyDeleteI chose to research Maya Angelou. Almost all of the people that my “Works by Others” were by,I had no idea who they were, so I just decided to write about Maya Angelou. I had never read anything by this author, and I didn’t really know who she was, so it was very informational for me. The hardest part was probably researching and finding complete answers to questions. It was very frustrating to have to keep finding new websites to answer a single question. Another thing that challenged me a little bit was writing in her perspective. It was interesting to read about her and her life because she had done so much. It was heart wrenching to read about what a horrific childhood she had, but then went on to do wonderful things with very notable figures in the Civil Rights Movement. Overall though, I did enjoy it and am happy with the way it turned out.
ReplyDeleteFor this assignment I decided to interview mark twain. Although I did not have any of his works in my anthology, I did think that it was important to do a fake interview with him because he was one of the more important writers in American history. His books made a large impact and I think that I was able to convey that with what I did. This assignment wasn't too hard to do, but I do think that one of the most challenging parts to this was collecting certain pieces of information. There was plenty of information on his books like Huck Finn, and tom sawyer, but there wasn't much in terms of information on his earlier books. His autobiography was also really hard to find information about because he made sure that it couldn't be opened and read until a set number of years had passed.
ReplyDeleteI chose to research and write my fake interview on Emily Dickinson. At first I did not know what I was going to do for my fake interview. While I was collecting poems for my anthology, one poet that really stood out to me was Emily Dickinson. I really liked the style that she wrote her poems in and the concepts that she wrote the poems about. After reading the requirements for this assignment, I knew that I would write my fake interview on Emily Dickinson. Collecting the information to answer the questions was a little difficult since during her lifetime, she stayed inside and did not leave her house or talk to many people. Once I was able to collect the information that I needed, the writing process of the interview was very fun. I enjoyed writing in the way that I envisioned Dickinson to respond to the questions and I really enjoyed how it turned out.
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