Famous Writers School

popmuze · Jul 8, 2007

No, I'm not talking about those infamous ads in the magazines. I'm wondering which famous writers any of us studied with at college or after.

One of the best or worst decisions of my career involved taking a graduate course at the City College of NY with the esteemed experimental writer John Hawkes (The Blood Oranges). He was notoriously intimidating and everyone in the course stopped writing by the time it was over. Although he compared some of the pages of my novel to Bernard Malamud, he wound up thoroughly tearing apart everything I wrote that semester.

I often wonder what it would have been like to take the same course with the other teacher visiting CCNY that year--Joseph Heller.

ChaosTitan · Jul 8, 2007

I didn't study with any famous students, but my junior-year screenwriting class was taught by produced screenwriter Kris Young. He's not exactly "famous," but he did write "Teen Angel."

swvaughn · Jul 8, 2007

Barbarique said:
I took classes with Jerzey Kosinski, Wilfrid Sheed and Anthony Burgess. Mr. Kosinski told us stories about how he was thought to have been murdered by Manson along with Sharon Tate. I recall nothing of Mr. Sheed. Mr. Burgess told us that creative writing classes were idiotic then offered us all paper cups of warm gin from a bottle he took out of an empty file cabinet.

Oh, I like Mr. Burgess.

Sandy J · Jul 8, 2007

I didn't study writing formally at all. My degrees are in criminology and education. I was lucky enough to hook up with a mentor who has kindly taken me under her wing and taught me the craft.

jhtatroe · Jul 8, 2007

I think all of my writing teachers deserve to be famous, but I recently saw that my old teacher, Philip Graham has a regular column at McSweeney's. My first glimpse of what a real writer's life was like was when he came into class one day looking exhausted because he'd been playing Myst (it was 1993) all night as a reward for finishing his novel. Oh how many times since then, I've bribed myself with The Sims.

Toothpaste · Jul 8, 2007

I did study with the rather quite well known Canadian playwright Djanet Sears actually. It was the best creative writing class I've ever taken. Not only was she so supportive, but she also told it like it was and if something didn't work it didn't work (she didn't just pat us on the back and say, "Well done you! You wrote something creative!"). Best of all she worked within each of our own genres, not trying to influence our writing to fit some generic model. And when we read our full plays on the last day of class (a rather long class, considering there were 7 of us, and we each had a one act play to get through), we drank wine and had food and laughed and it was just so amazing. It was by far the best class I took at university.

Vanatru · Jul 8, 2007

I was in a class taught by Bob Mayer. He does action/adventure. Real nice guy. Very knowledge about his subject, the factual side that is.

I haven't spoken to him in over 10years but he was very approachable back in the day. I understand he does the circuit now and does teach a class or two.

nevada · Jul 8, 2007

In October I did a workshop with Bob Mayer and he was great. Funny, knowledgeable, to the point. One of the better workshops Ive taking. ANd then, I had a one on one with him where he went over the first five pages of my manuscript. He was honest, direct, to the point. I stopped writing for five months. I've dumped the manuscript, may never pick it up again. He was absolutely right.

JamieFord · Jul 8, 2007

I took a class from Orson Scott Card which was phenomenal.

JoNightshade · Jul 8, 2007

I took all of my creative writing courses in college from Susann Cokal, who was fantastic. I actually haven't read her book because I loved her classes so much I was afraid that my opinion of her weird book would make me like her less! She was funny, truly strange, and let us come over to her house to drink wine and try on her wig collection. Not kidding. Actually she was also quite young, so she was more like a friend than a professor.

I took Russian Lit from Robert Inchausti, who was probably the best teacher I've ever had. He couldn't have cared less if you came to class; he passed pretty much anyone who made an effort at an essay... but if you wanted to learn something? Oh man, he was THERE. He had this great "This is college, I'm not your babysitter... show up if you want to go somewhere deep" attitude.

JoNightshade · Jul 8, 2007

JamieFord said:
I took a class from Orson Scott Card which was phenomenal.

::Jo turns green with envy::

The Grift · Jul 8, 2007

Oddly enough, I've had more famous authors as professors in law school than I did in college, where I was an English/writing major. Of course, the law school professors weren't writing fiction, depending on what you thought of their politics... And I guess anyone who went to college has had many professors who are published, as it is often part of the job requirement.

In college, for my creative writing classes, I had authors who I had never heard of before but subsequently came to read and admire. George Foy writes amazing cyberpunk literary fiction (and also straight literary fiction under the name GF Michelson). Marc Cirino has a good lit-fic novel out, but he hasn't published in many years. Irini Spanidou spins a good yarn. I recommend any and all of them. Especially George Foy / G.F. Michelsen, as his writing is closest to what I would like to accomplish.

Kaytie · Jul 8, 2007

For creative writing I've had: T. C. Boyle, Charles D'Ambrosio, Jim Shepherd, Gina Nahai, S. L. Stebel, Shelly Lowenkopf, Noel Riley Fitch and Hubert Selby, Jr. before he died. I worked with most of them through USC's Master of Professional Writing program.

blacbird · Jul 8, 2007

Did a M.F.A. at Iowa under John Irving. The other major instructor I did workshops with was Raymond Carver. Other writers in residence at the time, from whom some instruction/advice/inspiration emanated included John Cheever, Anthony Burgess, Angus Wilson and Frederick Exley. Co-students at the time included Tracy Kidder and Joe Haldeman.

What went wrong?

caw

Anthony Ravenscroft · Jul 8, 2007

I sometimes wish I'd had some formal training as a writer, but the fact is that aside from Freshman Composition requirements I've never had any -- though my long-suffering instructors were two of the most influential teachers I've ever had.

I did once take a seminar with Noam Chomsky. Other than playing bass (briefly) for Paul Westerberg, that's about it for my Famous Names list.

Listening to authors speak at science fiction conventions has been a major influence on my writing. They were speaking informally to a fairly small group, & I could experience a sliver of what it was like to be a writer.

Famous Writers School

popmuze

Last of a Dying Breed

ChaosTitan

Around

swvaughn

adrift

Sandy J

In a state of denial...

jhtatroe

Toothpaste

THE RECKLESS RESCUE is out now!

Vanatru

practical experience, FTW

nevada

JamieFord

giving resonant directions

JoNightshade

has finally arrived

JoNightshade

has finally arrived

The Grift

Tom Swiftly's Favorite Adverb

Kaytie

blacbird

Anthony Ravenscroft

Scribble, scribble, scribble