What can reading teach us about loss, healing, and survival? How can we transform anger into empathy? What can we learn from the creative act about turning personal setbacks into opportunities for self-discovery and growth?

Andre Dubus III’s nine books include the New York Times’ bestsellers House of Sand and Fog, The Garden of Last Days, and his memoir, Townie. His work has been included in The Best American Essays and The Best Spiritual Writing anthologies. His novel, House of Sand and Fog was a finalist for the National Book Award and was made into an Academy Award-nominated film starring Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly. His most recent books are the novel, Such Kindness and a collection of personal essays, Ghost Dogs: On Killers and Kin.
Dubus has been a finalist for the National Book Award, and has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, The National Magazine Award for Fiction, two Pushcart Prizes, and is a recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. His books are published in over twenty-five languages, and he teaches at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. 

"The character I wrote about in House of Sand and Fog was based on a former colonel and aeronautical engineer in the Shah's Air Force. I watched him work at a gas station. And on his days off, he'd put on his suit and look for better work. One night I'm helping him bring his groceries in, and he said in his thick Persian accent, "You know, I used to work with kings and presidents and prime ministers in my office by myself. Now, I'm serving candy and cigarettes to kids who don't even know who I am."

"I did some acting in my 20s and 30s. It's an art form I really admire, but it's a sister art form where you are emptying yourself of yourself to become someone else, except you're bringing your humanity to whoever's point of view you're writing from, whether it's a man or a woman, someone from a different race or ethnicity or religious background. We all share far more than we do not, and so we have to find that common thread. It's ironic that you find more of yourself stepping into the private skin of another, but isn't that always also the case being a reader? We read from the points of view of other human beings, sometimes from cultures we've never even stepped into, and we find more of ourselves than we did before. It's the miraculous promise of literature."

www.andredubus.com
www.andredubus.com/ghost-dogs
www.andredubus.com/house-of-sand-and-fog
www.andredubus.com/such-kindness

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast