August 5, 2019
The Most Direct Good: An Interview with Matthew Salesses, Author of Craft in the Real World
This post is the fifth in a months-long series that explores the topic of craft: what it is, how it has evolved, who has historically had access to it, and […]
July 19, 2019
A Day in the Life of a Teacher-Writer-Parent
[Pictured above: The Teacher-Writer-Parent wearing the huge, blueberry-like “Thinking Cap” her son made to “help her think of really good writing.”] 5:30 a.m.—Woken up by the five-year-old boy sitting on […]
July 12, 2019
So That’s How You Do It: An Interview with Michael Noll, Author of The Writer’s Field Guide to the Craft of Fiction
This post is the second in a months-long series that explores the topic of craft: what it is, how it has evolved, who has historically had access to it, and […]
May 30, 2019
The Wow Moment: On the Joys of Teaching
June 2009. My classmates and I are gathered in a dimly lit room in Rome, where our instructors, Stephanie Vaughn and Michael Koch, lead Cornell’s annual summer creative writing program […]
November 16, 2018
Adventures in Pedagogy: Teaching Your Students to Become Textual Flâneurs (plus pedagogy links)
This is the first essay in my new series on teaching for the Kenyon Review, Adventures in Pedagogy. Each year that I teach college English, film, composition, and creative writing, […]
April 1, 2018
On Writing, Workshop & Mental Health: A Roundtable (Part 3)
As a poet, I don’t like being told to abide by certain rules in poetry; whenever someone comes out with a list, say, of words that poets should never use, […]
February 27, 2018
Gentrified Hegemony
We rarely talk about how cultural hegemony works within the process of gentrification, although the process itself is inherently one of cultural and social environment change. We talk about the […]
November 15, 2017
Christopher Soto on the June Jordan Teaching Corp
DM: Dr. Joshua Bennett and The Center for Justice at Columbia University have invited you to teach a community-based writing workshop that serves both the Columbia University student body and also members […]
August 18, 2017
An Interview with Poetry Teacher Extraordinaire, Marty Skoble
The extremely humble Marty Skoble has single-handedly created a new generation of poets and writers. He was my poetry teacher from fifth grade to twelfth grade at St. Ann’s School. […]
August 8, 2017
An Interview with Poet, Teacher, and Activist Jimmy Santiago Baca
by Kirsten Ogden This is the third interview in a series about the intersections of writing, teaching, and identity. Read Past Interviews in the series: Mike Rose, Virginia Pye. Jimmy Santiago Baca […]
April 19, 2017
When Students Become Teachers
Recently an essay by a student at the school where I teach was named one of sixteen finalists in the Facing History and Ourselves essay contest. I had given him […]
March 31, 2017
Is it a Reading Exam or a Writing Exam?
At the end of last school year, I was teaching a semester-long course to seniors called The Writing Life, in many ways an extension of the fall semester’s The Writers’ […]