Rainier Writing Workshop
"I am impressed with the caliber, commitment, and generosity of the faculty. Their willingness to engage with us in and out of our classroom made this experience unlike any other I've had."
Profile
Professional
Emphasis
Fiction
Responsibilities
Mentor. Workshops and classes in fiction.
Statement: "As a writer, I am endlessly surprised and fascinated by the possibilities offered by narrative and by language; as a teacher, I try to get students excited about those possibilities by sharing my discoveries and encouraging them to make discoveries of their own. Above all, I try on a daily basis to remind myself and my students of the joy that literature can provide both reader and writer, the relief from a world that often suppresses joy, the pleasure of finding a way to communicate genuinely what it feels like to be human. What a wonderful way to spend one’s life, working day after day to create what Kafka’s called 'the ax to break the frozen sea within us.'"
Personal
Biography
His stories and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, New England Review, Crazyhorse, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Salem, Ore. and teaches at Willamette University, where he holds the Hallie Brown Ford Chair in Writing.
