In This Issue

Teachers & Writers Magazine
Workshops
Books from Teachers & Writers
2020 Visions
Deadlines

Letter from the Director

Dear Friends,

Happy new year! As always, January is a time for new beginnings. Here at Teachers & Writers Collaborative (T&W), we’re starting 2008 by launching our bi-monthly e-newsletter.
This publication represents our commitment to keeping you updated about our work, including:

• Highlights from each issue of Teachers & Writers magazine.
• Submission guidelines for the annual Bechtel Prize, T&W Fellowship program, and other opportunities.
• Previews of new books and reminders of T&W classics.
• Profiles of our writing programs at schools and community sites, and of the writers who teach for us.
• Listings of upcoming events in our 2020 Visions reading series.

In this issue and in future editions, you will find lots of links to our newly redesigned website at www.twc.org. Log in often to check for new content, such as upcoming podcasts of readings in our Center for Imaginative Writing.

Our commitment to increased communication includes a desire to hear from you! Please let us know what you think about this newsletter, the website, and our work in general. Send your comments, questions, and suggestions to us at e-newsletter@twc.org.

Thank you and best wishes for a happy year filled with good reading and writing.
Amy Swauger, Director

TEACHERS & WRITERS MAGAZINE

Bechtel Prize-winning Essay Featured in Winter Issue

Volume 39 Number2

“I do not always know the private traumas that the children in my classroom have suffered. Knowing Andre, I am given the gift of access; knowing what happened, I can try to learn what to do to best address his needs and to create a healthy learning environment. Because of him I am learning to be a better teacher.”

by Anna Sopko, “Writing Standards: Finding One’s Way with Words”, 007 Bechtel Prize Winner

The winter 2007-2008 issue of Teachers & Writers magazine, mailed to subscribers in early January, features the 2007 Bechtel Prize-winning essay of Anna Sopko, a third-grade teacher in San Francisco. T&W awards the Bechtel Prize annually in recognition of an exemplary article or essay related to creative writing education, literary studies, and/or the profession of writing.

Sopko’s essay, “Writing Standards: Finding One’s Way with Words,” intersperses language from the California English Language Arts standards with the story of Andre, one of her students, whose father murdered his mother. The murder trial was held while Andre was in Sopko’s class, and her essay highlights the sometimes absurd disconnect between the requirements outlined in education standards and the real-world issues that children face. The essay is also a beautiful and moving portrait of a little boy who, while struggling with a horrifying family situation, tries hard to do his best in school and develops a strong attachment to his teacher.

The full text of Sopko’s essay can be found on the T&W website, along with another article from the winter issue: Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein’s “Inventing New Forms: Three Experiments for Teaching Poets.” In this piece, Lichtenstein describes how creating new poetic forms can help teaching artists breathe new life into their work in the classroom, and offers three hands-on examples from her own work.

To read the 2007 Bechtel Prize-winning essay, go to www.twc.org/assets/anna_sopko_39-2_2007.pdf.

Read “Inventing New Forms” at www.twc.org/publications/magazine/magazine-sample.

A one-year subscription to Teachers & Writers magazine is $20. Subscribe online at www.twc.org/publications/magazine.

Learn more about the Bechtel Prize and find the 2008 submission guidelines at www.twc.org/publications/bechtel-prize.

WORKSHOPS

College Application Writing Program at Harlem’s Frederick Douglass Academy

In fall 2006, T&W began work at the Frederick Douglass Academy (FDA), a public high school in Harlem, to help seniors at the school: 1) improve the organization, content, mechanics, style, and creativity of their expository writing; and 2) develop the ability to compose effective college application essays and college-level research papers.

The five-day pilot project was made possible through the support of the Charles Hayden Foundation. Based on the success of the pilot and the high quality of colleges and universities at which participating students secured interviews, FDA’s principal, Dr. Gregory Hodge, asked T&W to expand the program to ten-day workshops serving all 240 juniors at FDA in spring 2007.

Five T&W writers, Olivia Birdsall, Shea Dean, Melanie Maria Goodreaux, Maya Nussbaum, and David Stoler, continued the program in fall 2007 with FDA seniors. Each teaching day includes two office hours to enable writers to work individually with students as they revise autobiographical statements and essays. Teacher Erika Brantley described the program’s impact in a recent e-mail to Nussbaum:

“Your work with the students helped immensely. Until Monica [1] completed your writing exercise, she was not able to break through the ‘wall’ that she was at a few weeks ago. I read her most recent draft of the personal statement and I literally wanted to shed a tear. It needs a bit of editing but when you read the before and after drafts . . . terrific!

“[And] the students really are listening! At first, I wasn’t so sure . . . but then Tony volunteered his work-breakthrough. Aisha read her work in front of the class-breakthrough!

“Thank you for making a difference in the lives of my students!”

T&W is proud to be working at FDA, a school that has been called a “model for learning” by the New York Times and that recently received The Schott Award for Excellence in the Education of African-American Male Students. Part of FDA’s mission is to “prepare students to enter the college of their choice.” T&W’s workshops help students to realize this goal by developing the skills to secure admission at the best possible college or university and to succeed in college-level courses that require writing.

T&W’s program at FDA reflects our ability to build on more than forty years’ experience teaching creative writing programs in public school classrooms to foster improvements in student essays and research papers. We hope to expand our work at FDA to include sophomores, and to develop the program as a model for use at schools and other youth-serving organizations throughout New York City.

To find out more about T&W’s writing programs, e-mail workshops@twc.org, call 212-691-6590, or visit the T&W website at www.twc.org/workshops.

Read bios of the talented writers who teach T&W’s school- and community-based workshops at www.twc.org/workshops/writers.

¹ Student names have been changed.

BOOKS FROM TEACHERS & WRITERS

Explore Poetry with Structure & Surprise

“This is a smart collection of takes on poetry’s most essential maneuvers-those swivelings, swervings, and veerings that send poems off in unexpected directions. Teeming with examples new and old, these lively essays are sure to heighten our awareness as readers by revealing the many ways that poems react to their own progress.”

by Billy Collins, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2001-2003

The latest book from T&W, Structure & Surprise: Engaging Poetic Turns, offers an approach to analyzing poetry through a focus on structures that cross literary genres and eras. Beginning with an extensive introduction to the power of poetic structure, the book offers examples of, models for, and commentary about specific structures, as well as ideas for individual writers and writing teachers to use in exploring the range of poetic possibilities. Fourteen contemporary poets discuss the use of structure in examples of their own work.

Structure & Surprise is appropriate for use in both undergraduate and graduate writing courses, and by individual poets and readers of poetry. Michael Theune, professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University, was contributing editor of Structure & Surprise. Other contributors to the volume include Christopher Bakken, John Beer, Jerry Harp, Corey Marks, D.A. Powell, Prageeta Sharma, Mary Szybist, and Mark Yakich.

Order Structure & Surprise and explore T&W’s current catalog of more than fifty books about writing at www.twc.org/publications.

“Michael Theune has come up with an ingenious way of thinking about poetry. He has enlisted a group of talented poets to guide us through the many challenging ways of envisioning and writing poems. The result is an immensely helpful book of turns and illuminations, a book on structure that is full of surprises.”

by Edward Hirsch, poet and president, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation

2020 VISIONS

2008 Series Kicks Off Friday, January 18

T&W will launch the 2008 2020 Visions reading series on Friday, January 18, with David Keplinger and Mrigaa Sethi. The series features established poets and authors reading with early-career writers who have been inspired by their work. 2020 Visions events are free and reservations are not required.
Upcoming readings include:

• January 18, 6:30 PM-David Keplinger and Mrigaa Sethi
• February 1, 7:00 PM-Felicia Luna Lemus, Jericho Brown, and Thomas Glave
• February 29, 6:30 PM-Levi Rubeck, Paul Hlava, and Nick Flynn
• March 14, 6:30 PM-David Floyd, Abraham Smith, and Bret Anthony Johnston
• March 28, 6:30 PM-Cathy Linh Che, Evelyn Ibarra, and Kimiko Hahn

Biographical notes on all the authors can be found at www.twc.org/events.

2020 Visions readings are held at T&W’s Center for Imaginative Writing, 520 Eighth Avenue (between 36th and 37th Streets), 20th floor. For updates on upcoming events, and directions to T&W, e-mail events@twc.org, call 212-691-6590, or go to the T&W website: www.twc.org/events.

DEADLINES

Submission Guidelines Available for 2008 Bechtel Prize

The submission guidelines for the 2008 Bechtel Prize are now available on the T&W website at www.twc.org/publications/bechtel-prize. The receipt deadline for entries is 5:00 PM, Monday, June 30, 2008.

T&W initiated the annual Bechtel Prize in 2004 with generous support from The Cerimon Fund. Named for Louise Seaman Bechtel, an editor, author, and teacher of young children, the prize recognizes an exemplary article or essay about creative writing education, literary studies, and/or the profession of writing.

The recipient of the 2008 Bechtel Prize will receive a $2,500 honorarium, and the winning submission will be published in Teachers & Writers magazine. Authors of finalists for the award will share honoraria totaling $1,000.