Preliminary notes on two seminars I will be teaching in May

I have been invited to teach at the Pima Writer's Workshop in Tucson, AZ, May 25-28. I will be critiqueing portions of manuscripts and doing one lecture and one group exercise.

There is a pleasing symmetry to this. When I was a child in India, Nancy Wall, a professor of English and Creative Writing from Pima Community College, befriended me and encouraged my writing. When I moved back to the USA, she invited me to attend the very first Pima Writer's Workshop.

I was thirteen and the youngest person there, and it was a great experience except for having a horrible early version of my never-ending attempt to write about my childhood get a bad critique by a woman who felt that it was not only bad, but racist. (I was attempting to write from the POV of a girl who was utterly freaked out at the first sight of India, and either did it very badly or too well. However, the critiquer should not have assumed that the opinions of the characters had to be the opinions of the author, give that it was a fragment of a novel, not a memoir.)

Twenty years later, I am returning to teach at the same workshop, and to discuss the final and successful version of that same story I tried so many times to write. But since I've never taught writing before, it will be my first time all over again.

Also, I now have new friends who live in Tucson! We must get together while I'm there!

I was alarmed to recently receive an e-mail from the program director asking for the titles of what I would be teaching, given that I had not yet given the matter any thought whatsoever, except to decide that I should do something on memoir since that's what everyone there would know me for. And since I've never done this before, and will be flying straight there from London and will be totally jet-lagged, I intend to do extensive pre-planning and work from notes.

( Cut for being preliminary and inchoate notes on one of the classes I'll teach )

Preliminary notes on two seminars I will be teaching in May

I have been invited to teach at the Pima Writer's Workshop in Tucson, AZ, May 25-28. I will be critiqueing portions of manuscripts and doing one lecture and one group exercise.

There is a pleasing symmetry to this. When I was a child in India, Nancy Wall, a professor of English and Creative Writing from Pima Community College, befriended me and encouraged my writing. When I moved back to the USA, she invited me to attend the very first Pima Writer's Workshop.

I was thirteen and the youngest person there, and it was a great experience except for having a horrible early version of my never-ending attempt to write about my childhood get a bad critique by a woman who felt that it was not only bad, but racist. (I was attempting to write from the POV of a girl who was utterly freaked out at the first sight of India, and either did it very badly or too well. However, the critiquer should not have assumed that the opinions of the characters had to be the opinions of the author, give that it was a fragment of a novel, not a memoir.)

Twenty years later, I am returning to teach at the same workshop, and to discuss the final and successful version of that same story I tried so many times to write. But since I've never taught writing before, it will be my first time all over again.

Also, I now have new friends who live in Tucson! We must get together while I'm there!

I was alarmed to recently receive an e-mail from the program director asking for the titles of what I would be teaching, given that I had not yet given the matter any thought whatsoever, except to decide that I should do something on memoir since that's what everyone there would know me for. And since I've never done this before, and will be flying straight there from London and will be totally jet-lagged, I intend to do extensive pre-planning and work from notes.

( Cut for being preliminary and inchoate notes on one of the classes I'll teach )