Sailing the Inland Sea: On Writing, Literature, and Land

Calling on the image of the Midwest’s vanished inland sea, Susan Neville has written a compelling collection of essays that ponder writing and the "landlocked imagination." The essays range from interviews with Indiana writers Kurt Vonnegut, Scott Sanders, Marguerite Young, and others, to discussions on techniques grounded in a Midwestern sensibility. As director of Butler University’s Visiting Writers Series, Neville has had the rare opportunity to converse with such literary giants as Salman Rushdie, Ray Bradbury, and Toni Morrison, and some of those exchanges have been incorporated into this exciting new collection.

Susan Neville is a native Hoosier and professor of English and creative writing at Butler University. Her books include Indiana Winter (IUP, 1994), Falling Toward Grace: Images of Religion and Culture from the Heartland (edited with J. Kent Calder) (IUP, 1998), and Iconography: A Writer’s Meditation (IUP, 2003). She is also on the faculty of the Warren Wilson Program for Writers in North Carolina. She lives in Indianapolis, Indiana.