On the Importance of Reading and Writing
In Composition 101 at the University of Tennessee, students learn the basic elements of rhetoric and about how it applies to writing they...
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The Blog.
I post bi-weekly about writing, editing, teaching, and travel.
Jan 29, 20233 min read
Why Are We Here?
On the first day of school, after the usual introductions and syllabus review, I ask my students to pull out a sheet of paper and answer...
Nov 6, 20224 min read
Writing as a Way to Read Life
Literature differs from life in that life is amorphously full of detail, and rarely directs us toward it, whereas literature teaches us...
Oct 9, 20224 min read
The Audience
So we're supposed to be ourselves when we write. But what about audience? If we're supposed to write as ourselves, are we writing to...
Sep 10, 20223 min read
Clutter
Consider the opening lines of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables: Halfway down a by-street of one of our New England...
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