Ars Poetica: Note to a student: The idea or goal for a memoirist is to find a subject whose grief loss trouble fascination joy enchantment or whatever it is that haunts me I can occupy with writing Many things that I write about become interesting to me not because I have "lived" that interest but because I trust that the writing itself is the place in which I can live and develop my interest It's not just about what happened in the past it's also about how that past keeps happening in and demanding answers from the present As an author/narrator I'm really like an actor taking on a new role I bring myself to the role and occupy its difference from me with my body and my mind my emotion these fingers on keys every day a live performance an improvisation that in turn is revised via further improvisation Somewhere Montaigne says this: the thing that fascinates me the most is what I think about something I haven't thought through yet The writing becomes the thinking through Sounds egotistical but that's the point of memoir and personal essay and where every day my writing practice begins Short Bio: Journalist music/book critic and memoirist Thomas Larson is the author of The Sanctuary of Illness The Saddest Music Ever Written and The Memoir and the Memoirist He is a twenty-year staff writer for the San Diego Reader Book Reviews Editor for River Teeth and a regular contributor to The Truth Seeker America's oldest freethought magazine An active member of AWP and Nonfiction Now he taught for eight years in the MFA Program in Creative Nonfiction at Ashland University Ashland Ohio As a lecturer Larson speaks about his book on heart disease holds workshops on "Writing the Memoir" and "The Spiritual Memoir" edits nonfiction manuscripts and gives talks on jazz American composers and nonfiction narrative Long Bio: 1 / 5
Among Thomas Larson's publications in 2017 are a series of pieces about Leo Tolstoy Wilfred Owen St Augustine and the spiritual memoir Pieces have appeared in The Truth Seeker Fre e Inquiry Assay Pacifica Literary Review Los Angeles Review of Books and Berfrois UK Initiating Larson's writing about religion spirituality atheism the Bible and other ultimate concerns is an interview he did in late 2013 with NPR's On the Media called "The Digital Bible" New memoir writing "What It Was My Father Came Here to Get Away From" is at River Teeth Summer 2017 Update: Larson is a featured on-screen interviewee in H Paul Moon s documentary Samuel Barber: Absolute Beauty now in nationwide release When invited he runs workshops on memoir and lectures on the music of Samuel Barber the craft of nonfiction the musicians of the Titanic the social author in the digital age and his heart disease having appeared in major bookstores libraries colleges and writing centers throughout America Larson is the author of The Sanctuary of Illness: A Memoir of Heart Disease Hudson Whitman / Excelsior College Press In 2014 he authored an eight-part blog at Psychology Today "Mysteries of the Heart" His six-part series The Social Author is at Guernica The essays focus on how 21st-century technology is transforming the writer into an author that is the private persona of the print-based writer is being overtaken by the public persona of the multimedia author 2 / 5
His The Saddest Music Ever Written: The Story of Samuel Barber s Adagio for Strings from Pegasus Books is a hybrid narrative and explores Barber s Adagio the Pietá of music and its enigmatic composer In its fall 2010 issue The Missouri Review published the first and second chapters of Saddest Music In 2011 this piece was nominated for a Pushcart Prize Larson is also the author of The Memoir and the Memoirist: Reading and Writing Personal Narrative Swallow Press / Ohio University Press 2007 In its fourth printing this book is the first of its kind to evaluate the dramatic rise of the memoir in the last twenty years and to explore the craft and purpose of contemporary memoir writing The Memoir and the Memoirist has been praised in the San Diego Union-Tribune ForeWord Magazine The Writer Ploughshares and The Bloomsbury Review From 2010 to 2017 he taught gave readings and craft lectures talked on publishing in the digital age and worked with thesis and post-thesis graduate students in Ashland University's low-residency MFA Program in Creative Nonfiction Beginning June 2014 Larson became the Book Reviews Editor for River Teeth online Each month the site features a review of a new typically small-press nonfiction book often memoir and essay collections A new occasional feature is "Neglected Nonfiction Classics" Since 1998 Larson has been a staff writer for the weekly San Diego Reader where he has specialized in narrative nonfiction features between 2500 and 15000 words For the Reader Larson has written fifty-five cover stories (and counting) and many inside 3 / 5
features In 2016 he completed several stories about San Diego innovative artists in music infographics performance art and fine art Among his Reader pieces are several true-crime murder stories and a feature on a Salvadoran immigrant who died from neglect at a San Diego federal detention center; a profile of conservative political writer Dinesh D Souza; the end-of-life tale of Mark Twain s daughter Clara Clemens; the story of Marilyn Monroe and "Some Like It Hot" filmed at the Hotel Del Coronado; an article on pit bulls sympathetic to their point-of-view; an exposé of a Mexican girl sold into sexual slavery in San Diego county; a profile of socialist author Mike Davis; articles on the molecular origin of life the personal motivation industry and San Diego s 2007 subprime mortgage meltdown; and a profile of the renowned psychologist Ken Druck whose Jenna Druck Foundation offers support for parents who have lost their children His essay "Disenthralled: An End to My Heart Disease" appeared in River Teeth April 2012 Larson has led workshops and classes in memoir writing at Kachemak Bay Writers' Conference Homer AK; The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis MN; the Ink Spot in San Diego CA; the Writer's Workshoppe in Port Townsend WA; the Lancaster Literary Guild Lancaster PA; Ghost Ranch in Santa Fe and Abiquiu NM; the Writers' Center in Bethesda MD; the Writers' Center in Indianapolis IN; the Hudson Valley Writers' Center in Sleepy Hollow NY; and as a visiting writer at the Red Earth MFA Program in Oklahoma City OK Larson's ebooks at Amazoncom include a primer on narrative style writers openings and the structuring of emotion in memoir What Exactly Happened: Four Essays on the Craft of Memoir; a long tribute On the Poetry of James Wright ; a takedown of celebrity autobiography Awash in Celebrity Authors ; and a personal essay We Are Their Heaven In his two-plus decades as a professional writer Larson has published a new prose piece on average every five weeks He has written about a range of topics including David Shields celebrity authors American poetry murders and suicides economics Charles Ives San Diego politics the memoir form human trafficking wild boars classical music and jazz his marriage & divorce reading on screens photography faked memoirs the last days of Nathanael West life after sports Georgia O'Keeffe Mozart US-Mexico border issues the memoirs of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and Anne Frank 4 / 5
Larson has been a book reviewer for a variety of publications including American Book Review Essay Daily Contrary Magazine The Rumpus Los Angeles Review of Books and the San Diego Union-Tribune In 2008 Larson s memoir Mrs Wright s Bookshop tied for the Readers Award for the Essay 2007-2008 at New Letters The author s memoir writing includes Freshman Comp 1967 from the Anchor Essay Annual: The Best of 1997 edited by Phillip Lopate Doubleday From 1980 to 1982 Larson as the music critic for the Santa Fe New Mexican wrote some 125 articles and reviews on opera classical music and jazz In the past 35 years Larson's published writing has passed three-quarters of a million words He is the father of two sons Jeremy and Blake He and his partner Suzanna Neal reside in San Diego and two/three months a year in Santa Fe New Mexico Finally Larson was born in Neenah WI grew up in Middletown OH moved to Wausau WI and to St Louis MO where he graduated high school He has an undergraduate degree in music composition from the University of New Mexico (1982) and a master's degree in American literature from the University of California San Diego (1986) 5 / 5