Self and Story: In Conversation with Gregg Hurwitz

The Ralston College Podcast

Gregg Hurwitz, the New York Times bestselling author of the Orphan X series and a storyteller whose work spans many mediums and genres, in conversation with Stephen Blackwood, the founding president of Ralston College, and with students enrolled in the inaugural year of the College’s MA in the Humanities program. In this live event—recorded on [date] at Ralston College—Hurwitz discusses the concrete details of his own writing practice and explains how his training in literature and psychology have informed his craft. He reflects on how storytelling helps us to understand the self and on the real-world value of learning to speak with honesty and authenticity.

Authors, Ideas, and Works Mentioned in this Episode:

Sigmund Freud

Carl Jung

Joseph Campbell

Gregg Hurwitz, You’re Next

The Sixth Sense (film)

Romanticism

William Wordsworth, “Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”

William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Transcendentalism

Kurt Vonnegut

James Joyce, “The Dead”; Ulyssess

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night

William Faulkner, Light in August; As I Lay Dying; The Sound and the Fury

Raymond Chandler

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

Edgar Allan Poe, “The Tell-Tale Heart”

Albert Camus, The Stranger

James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice

Carl Rogers

Lord Byron

Batman (comic series)

Punisher (comic series)

Richard Wagner, Der Ring des Nibelungen

Pablo Picasso

Joan Didion

The Book of Henry (film)

Alan Moore