Stories into Song Workshops: Paul Auster’s City of Glass

In these two co-creative workshops, hosted by James Peacock (Keele University, UK) and François Hugonnier (University of Angers, France), we aim to write a song adapted from Paul Auster’s City of Glass, published as the first part of The New York Trilogy in 1987.

The workshops follow on from a British Academy-funded research project carried out by Dr Peacock and his colleague, Nick Bentley, at Keele University in 2023-24. Information about the project, as well as songs that emerged from it, can be found on our Soundcloud page: Stream Stories into Song music | Listen to songs, albums, and playlists for free on SoundCloud. You might also be interested to read a related academic article: https://doi.org/10.1093/adaptation/apae025

The workshops are open to anyone interested. There is no requirement for unique literary or musical expertise: our only request is that you have read the City of Glass and are prepared to analyse it and share your ideas for how we might adapt it into a song. All ideas are welcome – the final song, whatever style it is, will be a group composition! 

Participants will discuss, among other aspects:

  • What they feel are the key themes and images of the story, and which might be suitable for a musical context
  • What the challenges are of adapting the City of Glass (or, indeed, any long-form literary text) into a short-form pop song
  • How much an adaptation can help us understand the literary text in new ways
  • City of Glass’s narrative voice, and how that might translate to the lyrical perspective of the song
  • The genre of Auster’s story, and the kinds of musical genres it might suggest
  • What kinds of instrumentation might be most appropriate for the song
  • Which specific words or phrases from the story could be quoted/adapted in the song’s lyrics
  • The structure of the song (intro, verse, chorus, middle eight etc.): does it follow the plot of the story, concentrate on individual scenes (like Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights”), explore themes, moods, or images etc.

The workshops are open to anyone interested. There is no requirement for special literary or musical expertise: our only request is that you have read the City of Glass and are prepared to analyse it and share your ideas for how we might adapt it into a song. All ideas are welcome – the final song, whatever style it is, will be a group composition!

Sign-up

Please sign up no later than 15 April

We look forward to seeing you there.