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A successful workshop is an intensely social organism. Only when everyone (including me) has been made comfortable can it pull together to do its work, which is to replicate, with its conflicting and choral voices, what goes on in a writer’s mind. It can’t generate writing, of course, but it can do everything else – criticize, focus, revise, interpret, make connections, establish direction. It provides a model, but not a static one; it’s continually in motion. The group can help a student improve a particular piece, but it also teaches, through repeated example, a more generalizable “take home” lesson. This is the inculcation of the habit of imagining the reader’s response – the crucial and underappreciated social aspect of writing. |
Teaching |
Inprint, Houston: Workshops in Personal Essay (17 times, 1997-2016)
Teachers-as-Writers Workshops: (twice, 1998) Workshop in Memoir: Spring 2000 Rice University, School of Continuing Studies: Workshop in Personal Essay, Winter 1998. Rice University English Dept.: Workshop in Personal Essay (twice, 2003 and 2004.) Rice University English Dept.: Visiting Writer, Spring 2008 – Spring 2009. Hofstra University: 31st Annual Summer Writers Conference, 2003. University of Wyoming: Visiting Writer: Spring semester, 2005. New School University Creative Writing Program: Residency, Fall 2006 University of Houston Creative Writing Program: Workshop in Personal Essay, Spring 2007 Methodist Hospital: Personal Essay Workshops, 2010 and 2011. Rutgers Camden: MFA Fiction Workshop, Fall 2011 Columbia University: MFA Master Class in Personal Essay, Spring 2012 Queens University of Charlotte Low Residency MFA Program: Residency, May 2012, May 2013, May 2014, May 2015 and continuing student supervision. . |