Visiting Writers and Poets

Debra Dean

Debra Dean's bestselling debut novel, The Madonnas of Leningrad, was translated into more than a dozen languages and received wide critical acclaim. It was selected as a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a Borders Original Voice, a #1 Booksense Pick, a Booklist Top Ten Novel, and a Notable Book of the Year by the American Library Association. A collection of short stories titled Confessions of a Falling Woman was published in January, 2008. A native of Seattle, Dean worked as an actor in the New York theatre for nearly a decade before opting for the life of a writer. She is currently working on a second novel.

View her website: www.DebraDean.com

Teaching Statement:

My undergraduate experience set the bar very high for me as a teacher. My professors' love for what they taught was so infectious that my friends and I would stay up late into the night talking about Joyce and Taoism and black holes. It was exhilarating to explore another facet of the world on nearly a daily basis. The school was small enough that my professors knew me - we were members of an intimate community - and though I may not remember much about Joyce or Taoism or black holes, what I took away was the rigor of their high expectations and the joy of learning for itself. Those teachers modeled for me a pedagogy that was less about passing on information than encouraging students to seek it themselves, the old 'teach a man to fish' adage. With creative writing, this approach is crucial because all writers must learn eventually to trust their own vision over that of even the best meaning teachers or editors or critics.

With each new story, with each new class, I know more but with less certainty. I've given up the search for a unified theory and reconciled myself to a patchwork of beliefs and techniques cobbled from my own experience and cadged from colleagues. Among these is my commitment to teaching writing as a process of revision. First inspiration is grand and lucky, but being a writer ultimately depends more on diligence than talent. (I am reminded here of the title of a seminal book on Buddhist practice: After the Ecstasy, the Laundry.) To this end, I front-load my courses with in-class and assigned exercises to explore various aspects of craft and to prime the pump; later in the term, the emphasis shifts to peer workshopping and revising. My grading for creative writing courses also deemphasizes the role of the muse: I grade primarily on completion of the course requirements, serious effort, and improvement - the latter invariably following the former. I've also discovered that, weirdly, there are many people now who want to be writers but don't necessarily want to be readers. In response, I've begun to add more reading to my courses.

Finally, I am only a good teacher to the degree that I know the writers I am teaching. To this end, I spend a number of hours at the beginning of the term in directed conversation finding out a little something about each student. Their writing will tell me much more as the term progresses. Creative writing is often where people are most vulnerable and revealing about their lives. A critical part of my role is to be compassionate and intuitive when students honor me with their trust, and to nurture and protect the risk-taking that is necessary to art. My background in the theatre has proved useful here: in the theatre, one must be disciplined and collaborative, but in the end, there is nothing without passion and a certain amount of messiness.