Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘teaching’

Shop Talk |

Book of the Week: A Kite in the Wind

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

This week’s feature is A Kite in the Wind, edited by Andrea Barrett and Peter Turchi. Published this spring by Trinity University Press, the book is the most recent title in a series of craft books that are drawn predominately from lecturers given as a part of the Warren Wilson MFA program. Previous collections include Poets Teaching Poets: Self and the World, edited by Ellen Bryan Voigt and Gregory Orr, and Bringing the Devil to his Knees: The Craft of Fiction and the Writing Life, edited by Charles Baxter and Peter Turchi. The series has also published anthologies of both […]


Shop Talk |

The Community-Word Project

by Lee Thomas

On a bright Friday morning in late April, I met up with Michele Kotler, Founder and Director of The Community-Word Project (CWP) for a classroom visit to PS/MS 279 in the Bronx. In their own words, CWP is a New York City based arts-in-education organization that inspires children in underserved communities to read, interpret and respond to their world and to become active citizens through collaborative arts residencies and teacher training program. The K-8 Captain Manuel Rivera, Jr. School bustled with activity. As we entered a classroom packed with 26 fourth-graders, David Ciminello greeted us. David brought poetry, visual art, […]


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A Brief History of an Ongoing Series: a guest post by Peter Turchi

by Celeste Ng

Editor’s note: As part of our focus on teaching this month, we’re delighted to present this guest post by Peter Turchi. Nearly twenty years ago, when I became director of the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers, I moved into a small office that had been left neat and nearly empty by the previous director. Most of what he left behind were helpful files and books, but under the desk there was also a cardboard box filled with miscellaneous manuscripts, some stapled, some paper clipped, some typed, some covered with handwritten notes and corrections. Months passed before I asked […]


Shop Talk |

Teaching, Writing, and Art. Or, the Art of Teaching Writing

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

As you may have noticed, our blog posts and features this week have all centered on the art of writing and the particular art of teaching writing. Some argue that writing can’t be taught, of course. Others say that only the craft of writing is teachable–that the spark of imagination and the vision of creation is not. But regardless of where you find yourself on the spectrum, we believe writers need community, and also that a community dialogue–whether in a workshop, a reading group, or an online forum such as ours–naturally benefits how we read and experience writing, as well […]


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Under the Influence… of prepositions?!

by J.T. Bushnell

Before submitting stories to workshop in graduate school, I spent hours combing my sentences for inefficiencies. I scrutinized verbs. I wrenched clauses from passive construction. I asked myself some hard questions about adjectives. My classmates often called my writing “clean,” which pleased me. I aspired toward concision. One term workshop was led by an intimidating man largely considered a genius among the graduate students. He introduced us to Chekhov and eviscerated stories with uncanny precision. When my turn came, I was nervous—with good reason. The week my story was up, he sent an email asking everyone to bring three pages […]


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Under the Influence… of Stuart Dybek

The first serious writing course I took was an undergraduate seminar on image taught by Stuart Dybek. Stuart stressed to us the importance of the well-chosen detail, the picture that would sear itself onto the reader’s retina all at once, creating a meaning-packet that was intuitively felt but also stood up to thematic interrogation. He gave an example that’s never left me: a drop of blood in a puddle of lime juice. I don’t know whether this image came off the top of his head or if it was taken from a published piece by another writer; I don’t remember […]


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Class project: Adopt a lit mag

by Celeste Ng

Kittens get adopted because they’re cute and fuzzy, with big eyes and adorable faces. (And those wee paws! Those little whiskers! Those tiny noses! Ahem.) But what about lit mags? No big eyes, no fuzzy paws—but they, too, deserve to be adopted. Enter the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses’ Lit Mag Adoption Program, which offers discounted subscriptions to literary journals in exchange for insider access for the students. Says the program’s website: Most poetry, short fiction, and creative non-fiction by emerging writers first finds its way into print through literary magazines, yet few student writers actively engage with the […]


Interviews |

Mishpocha and Beyond: An Interview with Erika Dreifus

In conversation with Anne Stameshkin, debut author Erika Dreifus shares true stories that inspired her collection, Quiet Americans; wonders when it’s kosher for authors to write characters from backgrounds they don’t share; explores how reviewing books makes us better fiction writers; and recommends favorite novels and collections by 21st-century Jewish authors.


Shop Talk |

"When you have only a sentence or two, there’s nowhere to hide."

by Celeste Ng

Twitter turned five this week—an event celebrated by some and bemoaned by others. Is the (very) short form killing or helping our communication? Writer and teacher Andy Selsberg argues that learning to write short can make you a better writer: I don’t expect all my graduates to go on to Twitter-based careers, but learning how to write concisely, to express one key detail succinctly and eloquently, is an incredibly useful skill, and more in tune with most students’ daily chatter, as well as the world’s conversation. […] So a few years ago, I started slipping my classes short writing assignments […]




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