For the final of the four Villanova Literary Festival events this spring, novelist and memoirist Paul Lisicky visited the West Lounge of Dougherty Hall to read from his newest novel.
His novel titled Song so Wild and Blue was released in early 2025, and his book graced the most anticipated nonfiction lists of most magazines. Lisicky’s novel follows parts of his life, accompanied by a semi-biographical account of the life of musical artist Joni Mitchell.
Alan Drew, MFA, started the night off by introducing two of the students in this semester’s “Authors On and Off the Page” class. The class, required as a part of the creative writing minor at Villanova, has students read the texts of incoming Literary Festival authors, who then host a Q&A in the class with the students.
The first student, sophomore Sam Sheeran, is a double major in Public Administration and English and hosts a jazz-themed show on Villanova’s student radio WXVU. Sheeran said of Lisicky’s novel that it is a “…remarkable work of inward and outward awareness…” and related his own experiences of being a musical artist to Lisickys.
The second student, senior Gabe Jimenez, is a senior English major who’s been playing instruments for 16 years, also said the “…combination of biography and memoir deeply resonated with me…”, describing Lisicky’s writing as “…lyrical…”
Once the two students introduced Lisicky, he called it the best introduction he had ever received at an event, noting the kind words of the students. He even recalled a time when he lived in Wayne, Pennsylvania for a year in trust accounting software, and laughed that he was “…happier to be here with you than with trust accounting…”
While the accounting job only lasted him a year, Lisicky is a seasoned writer, graduating with a BA from Rutgers University, where he now teaches creative writing at the Camden campus. Lisicky then received his MFA from the University of Iowa, and has been the recipient of the National Endowment of the Arts fellowship and numerous book awards from NPR to the New York Times.
Lisicky began reading from a portion of his novel called “Down to You,” which started with a small section of biographical fiction from the perspective of music artist Joni Mitchell. The beginning section talks heavily of a relationship in his adult life, where he and a man bonded over the music of Joni Mitchell during the COVID-19 pandemic, describing the feeling of being close to a person despite having never seen them in person.
The novel describes how Lisicky lost his love for music and songwriting, switching over to prose writing primarily, but the man he spoke with, named Jude, helped him rediscover the love for Joni Mitchell’s music that brought him to writing in the first place.
After reading, Lisicky noted the type of writing he wants to convey, which is writing that people always come back to. He likened works of writing to songs, and how when you love them, you return to them over and over again. He then took a few questions from the audience, the first asking if he ever got stuck on sentences or chapters the same way a musical artist may get stuck on a lyric or tune.
And with a completely honest answer, Lisicky said he had never really thought of it that way, but said the way he solves being stuck, by writing descriptions against each other, is how he gets out of being stuck. Lisicky was also asked how his structure of writing has changed now that music and songwriting has come back into his life. Lisicky described how this was his first contracted novel, and wanting to make it about music, he had to mull over the structure deeply, which allowed him to explore his writing in more ways.
Overall, Lisicky’s visit marked the final event of the semester-an overall great few months of various speakers and events for the Villanova Literary Festival.
And hopefully, with greater traction, the Creative Writing and English Departments can host even larger events in the upcoming years.
