Teaching
I have been teaching a fiction writing workshop at New School University in Manhattan (that's NYC, folks, not Kansas) since 1995.
All summer, before the first September workshop was scheduled to begin, I thought and planned extensively to design a course that would be unique to my fledgling vision as a teacher. I knew I didn't want it to imitate the competitive atmosphere of many of the workshops I'd taken as a graduate student. My goal would be to focus aspiring writers on their own voices, their own visions, and their own goals. To that end, I spend the first class of every semester discussing the workshop's format and explaining how things will go in class, with special focus on how to critique each others' work without inflicting damage to aspirations or egos. In fiction workshops, I abhor personality contests; that's why, in my course, I insist that we focus on each writer's intentions for his or her work. After the first class, each workshop session is spent on stories or novel excerpts by two student writers. Discussions are initiated by students, and I jump in later, when things are well underway. Over the years, I've found this approach to be creative and empowering for most everyone in the room. And to my great delight, I've discovered that, after years of effectively taking the workshop along with my students (never actually sharing my own work, of course), I've been learning alongside them.
Teaching my fiction writing workshop has been, and continues to be, one of my life's great rides. I've learned a tremendous amount, and have been lucky enough to have met many, many wonderful people.
For a link to "First Pages," an article I wrote based on an exercise I developed for my course, click here (link to come). (The article byline reads Kate Pepper, as the piece was originally written as promotion for one of my/her novels.)
For a link to New School University, where you can find out more about my course, click here.