April 29, 2010

Please take a minute to visit Dai Tran and Portia Trujillo's new blogs, and read Dai Tran's wonderful post below.

Portfolios are due by 4:00 pm on Thursday, May 6th.

I will be on campus Tuesday and Thursday during our normal class times in my office in Rm. 230 (South Building). If you have any concerns about anything, try to see me either of those days before I enter grades. My gradebook closes at 4:00 on Thursday, May 6.

My mailbox, if you want to just drop it off, is in Rm 313 (South Building).

I look forward to reading them all!

I just want to take a moment to tell you how much I've enjoyed working with you all this semester, watching your writing grow, reading your beautiful, poignant, funny, sad, and deeply honest stories. My hope for you, at the beginning of the semester (if you remember) was that after this class you will have a different kind of appreciation for writing, and that writing will no longer be something scary or awful or boring or whatever but might, just might, be something fun...even a creative outlet you never knew you had. I hope that, at least for some of you, this has become the case.

For those of you who enjoyed this more than you thought you would (smile!), I recommend continuing with your journal, read, read, read, and take a creative writing class. Also check out the literary events around town, meet some other writers, get them to read your work and vice-versa. The second best thing you can do for your writing, besides writing and reading, is to hook up with other aspiring writers and start exchanging work, meet in coffeeshops, bars, parks...I owe much of my writing success to 10 years of an amazing writing group that I originally met through my undergrad.

And for the rest of you, I hope that this class has given you the confidence to tackle the many papers and essays you will have to write in your college career with more gusto and confidence!

Feel free to stay in touch with me! I will continue doing events around town as well (I have another book coming out in June: Fast Forward: The Mix Tape) and I would be happy to keep you updated on release parties and readings and such. And if any of you are in NY in June, I'll be reading there on the 19th. Woohoo.

My hopes for your success!
Nancy