Augustus Rose

Augustus Rose
Assistant Professor of Practice in the Arts
MA, Creative Writing (Fiction), University of California, Davis BA, Film Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
Teaching at UChicago since 2009

Synopsis

I am primarily a novelist, and secondarily a screenwriter. Writing is first and formost process of discovery and as a novelist I like to follow my interests, especially when they lead me into strange or unexpected territories.

Biography

Marcel Duchamp said: “The artist performs only one part of the creative process. The onlooker completes it.” He also said: “It’s not what you see that is art; art is the gap.” These two quotes summarize my aim as a novelist: to put works out in the world that, when read, create a third thing in the space between book and reader that is unique to that interaction.

My debut novel The Readymade Thief is about a young woman at the center of a mystery involving the art of Marcel Duchamp, the dark net, urban exploration, and the shotgun marriage of alchemy and string theory. My screenplay Far From Cool was a finalist for the Academy Nicholl Fellowship. My current novel-in-progesss takes place in a San Francisco high school in the early 1980s. 

Conferences and panels include:

Eisenhauer Library, Chicago

  • Discussion about Marcel Duchamp, Subcultures, and The Readymade Thief

The Postmasters Gallery in NYC

  • “The Readymade Thieves” Panel on Marcel Duchamp with Artist Serkan Ozkaya

University of Chicago 2017 Humanities Day

  • Research and the Literary Imagination: Poetry, Fiction, and Nonfiction

2017 Harbor Springs Festival of the Book

  • When History and Storytelling Collide

 

Work with Students

I’ve advised everything from novels-in-progress to story collections to screenplays to a single-paragraph experimental novella. I don’t judge or discriminate according to genre, only by the quality of the work. I see it as my job to help students evolve and improve their own work as much as possible, according to a student’s own vision of where they want to take that work.

Select Publications

  • Rose, Augustus. 2017. The Readymade Thief. New York: Viking Penguin.
  • Rose, Augustus. 2017. “The Puzzles of Marcel Duchamp.” UK: Foyles
  • Rose, Augustus. 2018. “In Praise of the Unshelvable.” New York: Lit Hub
  • Rose, Augustus. 2018. Review of R.O. Kwon’s The Incendiaries. Chicago: Chicago Review of Books

Teaching

  • Advanced Fiction Workshop: Narrative Structure and Character Arc
  • Advanced Fiction Workshop: Narrative Questions & Character Revelation
  • Advanced Fiction Workshop: Novel Writing, the First Chapters
  • Technical Seminar in Fiction: Research and World-Building
  • Technical Seminar in Fiction: Setting (Beyond) the Stage
  • Intro to Genres: Crime & Story
  • Fundamentals in Creative Writing: The Question of Perspective