Voices of the Unbound

Questions to Consider (Examples)6 questions

• How does each selection relate to this year’s theme?
• Is poetry more meaningful when it is bound to form?
• Are stories more difficult to write today than they were a century ago?
• Is it appropriate to include real living people as characters in works of fiction?
• How different would stories be if characters were aware that they were characters?
• What is the best medium for stories about superheroes?

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Poems13 questions

• All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace | Richard Brautigan
• The Red Wheelbarrow | William Carlos Williams
• This is Just to Say | William Carlos Williams
• One Art | Elizabeth Bishop
• Midway | Naomi Long Madgett
• Since feeling is first | E. E. Cummings
• Ulysses | Alfred Lord Tennyson
• In Search of Evanescence | Agha Shahid Ali
• Ghazal: In Real Time | Agha Shahid Ali
• Esse | Czeslaw Milosz
• Kid | Simon Armitage
• The Flash Reverses Time | A Van Jordan
• Einstein Doing the Math and Einstein Ruminates on Relativity | A Van Jordan

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Short Stories5 questions

• The Seven Messengers | Dino Buzzati
• Two Words | Isabel Allende
• Third Class Superhero | Charles Yu
• 26 April 1905 and 11 June 1905 from Einstein’s Dreams | Alan Lightman
• Quantum Nonlocality and the Death of Elvis Presley | B.J. Novak

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Longer Works2 questions

• “In Dreams” and “Dinner at Eight” from Astro City: Life in the Big City | Kurt Busiek
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay | Michael Chabon (For Regional Rounds, The Escape Artist and this excerpt only)

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