Fire Starter

Writer brings "arsonist" to campus

February 19, 2008

Brock Clarke '90, author of An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England, returns to campus to pass the torch to aspiring writers.

Brock Clarke's fourth and newest novel, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England, is sure to spark interest.

The 1990 graduate will be making several appearances on campus during the Cogan Alumni Fellowship and Belfer Creative Writing Lectureship programs.

An English major at Dickinson, his senior seminar's trip to the Emily Dickinson Museum inspired a short story, "She Loved to Cook but Not Like This," about a character who burns down the homestead. The piece, which appeared in his short-story collection What We Won't Do, developed into the Arsonist's Guide novel.

Clarke's previously published works include: The Ordinary White Boy, What We Won't Do and Carrying the Torch.

Washington Post Book World praised Arsonist's Guide as a "straight-faced, postmodern comedy [that] scorches all things literary, from those moldy author museums to the excruciating question-and-answer sessions that follow public readings. There are no survivors here: women's book clubs, literary critics, Harry Potter fans, bookstores, English professors, memoir writers, librarians, Jane Smiley, even the author himself—they're all singed under Clarke's crisp wit."

It's better to write about an arsonist than be one

Currently associate professor of English and creative writing at the University of Cincinnati, his widely published work has earned the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction and the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction.

Annually, the English department invites two alumni English majors to share their life and work experiences for the Cogan Alumni Fellowship, which is named in honor of Eleanor Cogan. She came to Dickinson as a continuing-education student in 1979 and eventually completed 52 courses, 32 in the English department. She received an honorary doctor of liberal arts during Commencement in May 2003.

The Cogan Alumni Fellowship presentation will take place Monday, Feb. 25, at 4:30 p.m. in Old West's Memorial Hall. It will begin with Christopher Kennedy '85, sports writer/editor for The Republican in Springfield, Mass., whose talk is called Local Today, Pro Tomorrow.

Clarke's talk, It's Better to Write About an Arsonist Than Be One, and Other Lessons I Learned at Dickinson, will follow Kennedy's. Clarke also will be presenting for the Belfer Creative Writing Lectureship, which brings notable writers to Dickinson each year, on Tuesday, Feb. 26, at 8 p.m. in Memorial Hall.