writer heroes

When your favorite professor teams up with you to teach

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One of the things I love about writers is that we’re always learning. My classes have been full of my colleagues, writers with fancy bylines and book deals. Still, we’re here, learning from each other. Writers never really “make it.” The process is always messy. The blank page is always intimidating. We always have room to grow.

I consider myself extraordinarily lucky. I’ve had so many generous, brilliant writing teachers. I remember my high school poetry teacher Judy Michaels (we all called her by her full name like that, Judy Michaels), who lent me books filled with the words of Sylvia Plath and Walt Whitman and my then all-time fave, Allen Ginsberg. I remember reading them secretly during chemistry class, because I was a rebel (or just hopeless with chem).

I’ve worked with too many great teachers to name. They shared with me new ways of seeing the world. New ways of using my brain. New possibilities.

Dinah Lenney was one of the best. The best! I’m trying to articulate why, and stumbling a little. I met her at the Bennington Writing Seminars, where she was on the MFA faculty and I was in my very first writing workshop as a Master’s student. I could not wait for her workshop to start. It was like I was ravenous, and it was a delicious meal. A juicy burger of a writing workshop.

I think she made me feel SEEN as a writer (and thus, as a human) in a way that was new to me. She saw the writing/me (I was studying nonfiction, so they are intertwined), what was on fire, and then saw where it could shine brighter. Where I could push myself further. Ask harder questions. Dig deeper. Where I was getting in my own way.

She saw my tricks and habits - tricks and habits I often didn’t even know I had - and saw right through them.

She could pep talk me up from a low. But she wouldn’t co-sign resting on my laurels.

Anyway, I love Dinah.

So I asked if we could catch up, because it’s been awhile.

And then something weird happened. On a total whim, I asked if she would teach a class with me.

And she said YES.

~ Squealing! Jumping up and down! Repeat! ~

So here we are. Dinah and I are hosting a small group workshop for four weeks this August. We’re going to talk about my favorite thing, food writing. We’re going to write together, read together, be in community, and learn from each other. It runs for four weeks.

We have just a few tickets left, and I hope you come join us, because it’s going to be a whole lot of fun.

xo,

Hannah