Why I chose to write psychological literary fiction and what I have done as a writer

 

Leader:  Brian Duren

Date: Oct 24, 2026

Time: 10:00 am - 12:00 pm

Location:  Bethlehem Lutheran Church – Commons Room
41st and Lyndale, Minneapolis

When I was young, I was a voracious reader. I fell in love with the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald in high school, happened upon Dostoyevsky in a bookstore the summer after I graduated from high school, and discovered Proust a year later. These are three of the greatest authors of psychological literary fiction. I also developed an interest in psychoanalysis when I was young. My senior year in high school, my psychology teacher gave me a book by Freud to read, so we could talk about the possibility of him including the book in his course the next year. I read the book, became fascinated by Freud, and by the time I finished undergraduate school, I’d read most of Freud’s major works. When I was a French professor, I taught courses on Proust, as well as other authors of psychological literary fiction, and on Freud—the influence of literature on Freud, and Freud on literature. And when I retired from academe, I finally had the opportunity to write my own psychological literary fiction. It has been quite a voyage, and I intend to replicate that voyage with you.

–Bio–

Brian Duren earned a Doctorate in French literature from the University of Paris, as well as a B.A. in English and a Ph.D. in French from the University of Minnesota. He taught modern French literature, European cinema and interdisciplinary courses on psychoanalysis and literature at the Universities of Texas, Tulsa, Iowa, and Minnesota, until he became an administrator. After retiring from academe, Brian launched a new career as an author of psychological literary fiction. He writes innovative novels with an introspective quality about nomadic characters who travel through time and space, always returning to what haunts them. His first novel, Whiteout, praised by the St. Paul Pioneer Press as a “stunning debut novel, worthy of national recognition,” won the Independent Publisher Gold Medal for Midwestern Fiction. Award-winning painter Nancy Robinson lauded Brian’s second book, Ivory Black, for “putting an imaginary paint brush into the hands of the reader and leading the way through an experience so real, it seems like more than a dream,” while Junot Diaz described his third, The Gravity of Love, as “a magnificent haunting duet of grief, absence, and the unshakable bonds of family …” Brian’s fourth novel, Day Brings Back the Night, will be published in June of 2026.