I always watch for the tortoise. The back wall of the writing studio is mostly a floor-to-ceiling window about eight feet wide, one vast sheet of glass holding the Florida scrubland outside. There’s a white dirt road behind a strip of live oaks and sumac and Spanish moss, and once, in the middle of an afternoon workshop, I saw a tortoise stumping ( Read more... )

The Kenyon Writers Workshop has again been an amazing, magical week ( Read more... )

I’m learning I need to go to bed earlier. Every morning I wake up feeling like there’s not enough sleep in the world.

DiscussionWe talk about last night’s faculty readings - how long is too long? I also noted that I didn’t like it when an author brought up their notebook or book, and leafed through it to find the next piece; dude, you knew you ( Read more... )

Discussion
We talked about Hope Edelman’s Strong Men and how the group of men was a character as a whole. How details show character. How Edelman left it open whether or not she was, in fact, an alcoholic, and how the line “It wasn’t bottom. Not yet.” implies that the bottom is coming, for either the author or her father ( Read more... )

In case anyone would like to follow along.

Nonfiction meets in a seminar room that feels straight out of Harry Potter - we're in a converted house called Sunset Cottage, in a room with walnut paneling and glass-fronted bookcases and a big square table that all 9 of us sit around.

IntroductionsThe teacher asked us to talk about our lives rather ( Read more... )