Posts Tagged ‘teaching’
forgetting and remembering
I keep having dreams in which I lose things or have them stolen: credit cards, my purse, a huge backpack from a train platform. In each dream, the same thing happens as soon as I realize the loss: my stomach sinks in that oh-no-I-can’t-believe-it kind of way. This is always followed by shame. How could…
Read Morewhat vacation?
I am up north this week with the girls and my mom and grandpa and my older sister and her fiancé. (Up north is what we say in Minnesota to mean anything north of the Twin Cities.) On Saturday, I led my “Writing Family” workshop in Park Rapids, and it was so much fun. Out…
Read Moreupcoming workshops and classes
After six months off from teaching, I am anxious to get back into the classroom. I’m craving that moment in class when a student realizes her writing is going in a direction she didn’t expect. I love being a part of that excitement and discovery. I have two classes coming up this summer/fall: Writing Family…
Read Moreguest-blogging
Thank you all for your kind words and encouragement. Your thoughts and good wishes are a virtual buoy, helping me stay afloat. Thank you! I am guest-blogging over at the Minneapolis StarTribune’s Cribsheet today. And each day for the rest of the week, Cribsheet will post a short essay from one of my Mother Words…
Read Morewho rocks the dialogue?
This week, one of my students wanted to talk more about dialogue because she was having trouble writing realistic, moving dialogue in her nonfiction. It’s a common problem, I think, for beginning writers because their instinct is to write dialogue in a vacuum: he said, she said, he said, etc. I want my students to…
Read Morekudos and a contest
I’ve just started my fall Loft class, and it’s so nice to be back “in it” again. I love the elated feeling, the “this is exactly what I want to do, what I love doing” feeling I have after a good class. But before I get too caught up in this term, I want to…
Read Moreon talent
First, thank you for all the supportive comments on my last post. I really appreciate it, and I actually feel much better this week (if the sensation of having vomit at the top of my throat can be considered “better.”) But, the nausea and tiredness are good things, clear signals that I am, indeed, pregnant.…
Read Moremothers' words speak volumes
Check out the Star Tribune’s parenting blog, Cribsheet, where I guestblogged about my Motherhood & Words class. Writing from four of my students will appear on Cribsheet this week, one essay each day, beginning today, so please check out these wonderful, emerging voices. They make me proud!
Read Morewhere voice resides: the allergy diaries
There are a few essays so well-written that I could use them to teach each element of craft. Jill Christman’s “The Allergy Diaries” is one of these essays. “The Allergy Diaries” describes Christman’s infant daughter’s anaphylactic reaction to cow’s milk and the aftermath of this discovery. That is the situation in the essay. The real…
Read Morewhen soccer and writing meet
Friday night, D. and I and a bunch of friends went to see the Zinedine Zidane movie at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. It’s a documentary in which 17 cameras follow Zidane for 92 minutes, a full soccer game. The audience was mostly soccer fans with colorful team scarves wrapped around their necks. (Even…
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