One of our talented classmates, Kathleen Abate, has had her essay "Landings" published at the journal Souvenir. After workshopping this piece a few semesters back, it's nice to see it make a "landing" of its own at such a good journal. It's a  poignant and unflinching piece of writing, but it's not easy to explain in a sentence what makes the essay so remarkable. At it's heart, it's about so many things--memory, aging, the nature of small-town living, and how time's chronology can sometimes feel surprisingly (and disconcertingly) fluid. You'd better take a trip over to the site and read Kathleen's essay for yourself, because I'm not doing it justice. Then come back here and congratulate her!

Oh, and while you are over there, be sure to check out Dominique Bruno's excellent review of Benjamin Percy's novel Red Moon. It's another piece that pairs its critical intelligence with a language that is, itself, literary.

Last night, we commenced our semester by holding our post-class celebration and hosting a private unveiling of our digital anthology project "Playback," which pairs student writing with the music that inspired it. To see excerpts from this anthology, head over to our Student Spotlight! page and leave some encouraging comments!

Congrats again to everyone for a great semester. I'll look forward to seeing you in the fall for our next course Imaginary Gardens, Read Toads: A Poetry Workshop and Craft Class!

Slowly but surely we are building our Student Spotlight! page with featured work by the writers from our Community Writing Workshops classes. This page will see a significant jump in student work at the end of this semester. For now though, I invite you to check out some work the previous classes produced for their "Night of Writing" events (some of these held back when we were still conducting our business through the former WVU Community Arts Program--seems like ages ago!).  Go check it out and, of course, leave encouraging messages!

It's the end of the year and all through the town, my students are writing--you can't get them to put their pens down. . . 

Down in Morgantown, the Community Writing Workshops folk have held their final class reading (if you haven't had a chance to listen to it yet, go check it out in our Student Spotlight!).

Meanwhile, up at Penn State-Fayette, my university students have finished their final portfolios for the semester, and are rushing headlong into break. If you'd like to read some of their latest work (and perhaps leave an encouraging comment or two), check out their Student Spotlight!

And, as we head into the New Year, let me wish everyone good health and peace of mind. Get some rest, too, because come spring, we're gonna rock!

Last night, we commenced our semester by holding our yearly class reading event. Our featured readers, Kathleen Abate, Dominique Bruno, Carol Howe Hamblen, Gay Kline, and Susan Truxell Sauter, read their nonfiction, poetry, and fiction, to an intimate and enthusiastic crowd of about twenty. To listen to the audio recording of their reading, head over to our Student Spotlight! page (where we'll be featuring more class work in the future) and leave some encouraging comments!

Congrats again to everyone for a great reading. I'll look forward to seeing you in the New Year for our spring course Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life!

Click here to check out some outstanding fiction excerpts from the talented young writers in my English 50 class at Penn State-Fayette, and show your support!