I spend my days encountering works of literature in the classroom with young writers — many of whom are reading James Baldwin, Louise Erdrich, Roxane Gay, George Saunders, Youssef Rakha, Akhil Sharma, Jhumpa Lahiri, or Denis Johnson for the first time. This is an incredible joy.
I teach fiction writing, nonfiction writing, and American Literature of various kinds. I have taught the Literature of American Immigration, the poetry of William Stafford, and even The Rock n’ Roll Novel, which the LA Times profiled, here.
In an ideal world — when the number of papers are at a reasonable level — I can let the thinking we do in the classroom feed into my own writing. And, at these points, the circuit comes together in a way that makes sense.