Award-winning author Dana Spiotta impressed more than 200 students Wednesday in Gifford Auditorium during the second event of the Raymond Carver Reading Series, with her insightful responses to readers’ questions.

Spiotta, an assistant professor of English at Syracuse University, spoke on her most recently published novel, ‘Stone Arabia.’ Spiotta’s third and latest novel focuses on the complexity of sibling relationships and the life of a budding artist who is consumed by his work and music.

The author interacted with students in a Q-and-A session and, following a short break, read passages from her novel at 5:30 p.m.

Spiotta dove right into the Q-and-A session, explaining herself as an author while simultaneously demonstrating her skills as a professor. The rapid-fire way in which Spiotta answered and addressed questions from the students, many of them from the ETS 107: ‘Living Writers’ course, had an academic feel to it.

Spiotta read from three sections of the novel, each of which touched on one of the book’s different themes and explored the two principal characters, Nik and Denise.

Students in attendance appreciated Spiotta’s brevity and the way in which she directly answered questions during the Q-and-A session.

‘I thought she answered the questions well and knew what she was talking about. She really knew her book,’ said Haley Eklund, a freshman English and textual studies major.

Some felt that Spiotta’s experience in the classroom made her better equipped to answer the readers’ questions.

‘She knows what readers want and how to answer their questions,’ said Sara French, a freshman psychology major.

Many of the questions Spiotta fielded addressed the structure and characterization of her book.

‘When you do something a little unconventional, people are going to freak out,’ Spiotta said in response to one student’s question about the way in which the story was structured.

Spiotta said that one of the topics she was interested in exploring in ‘Stone Arabia’ was the way in which society defines success and what this means for one of the main characters, Nik, a musician. She said she wanted the reader to think about whether making money or an audience is what makes an artist successful.

Spiotta praised the students for their insightful questions. She said she was glad that the students had taken the time to read the book and think about it on a more complex level.

Multiple students asked about the novel’s ambiguous ending. Spiotta said she gets many responses from readers that have different interpretations of the book’s end and that she feels this is positive.

‘I was really open to wherever it was going to go. If people have other ideas about it I think it’s good,’ Spiotta said. ‘Maybe all of those things can be true, and I think that’s exciting. I learn a lot about my work from hearing their responses.’

Ultimately, Spiotta said leaving the ending open to interpretation was a characteristic of her writing style.

She said: ‘I like to leave things open-ended. I wanted the book to have a kind of dynamism that kept the reader thinking after they closed it.’

cffabris@syr.edu 

Published on September 27, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Casey: cffabris@syr.edu | @caseyfabris