MFA in Creative Writing Program

Richard Panek, MFA

Faculty Advisor, MFA in Creative Writing Program

When an editor approached me about writing a history of the telescope, I immediately declined. I didn’t have a science background; I’d never written about science. But then the editor said, “Think of it as an essay,” and I haven’t looked back. What changed my mind was the realization that as a writer I should be able to approach this topic, however daunting, just as I would any other. I have a background in journalism; I have a background in fiction. I hoped that by combining my experience in conducting research with my experience in constructing narratives, I could make even a somewhat esoteric subject accessible to a general readership. Since then I have published three books about the history and philosophy of science for non-specialist readers, Seeing and Believing: How the Telescope Opened Our Eyes and Minds to the Heavens (Viking, 1998), The Invisible Century: Einstein, Freud and the Search for Hidden Universes (Viking, 2004), and The Four Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011).  I'm now collaborating with Temple Grandin on a book about the brain.  Although I have continued to write about non-scientific topics (and have published short stories through the PEN Syndicated Fiction Project and in Ploughshares), my primary focus has become the intersection of science and culture. My essays and articles on that subject have appeared in various sections of The New York Times as well as in Smithsonian, Discover, Natural History, Esquire, Outside, Seed, and many other publications, and on National Public Radio. I have received a 2008 Fellowship in Science Writing from the Guggenheim Foundation, a 2007 Fellowship in Nonfiction Literature from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and an Antarctic Artists and Writers Program grant from the National Science Foundation. Throughout this surprising (to me) turn my writing has taken, I have always asked myself two questions that I also encourage students to ask of themselves: Have I explained this topic in such a way that I would have understood it before I started my research? Have I found a way to illuminate the human drama that is at the heart of every narrative, whether fact or fiction? If the answers are yes, then maybe I am - we are - heading in the right direction.
 

Residency Site: Plainfield, Vermont 

 

Educational Background:  MFA in Fiction, University of Iowa; BS in Journalism, Northwestern University.

 

 

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