🧵Thursday Thread: Tell me your teacher tales! I want to hear them all, good, bad, and otherwise!
Colleen Wilcox said teaching is the greatest act of optimism. I agree, but it isn't always like that, we know. So I'd love to hear about any teachers who affected your life, for better or worse ...
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Friends, yesterday was a first for me. Until now, I’ve done lots of interviews, but never had a profile written about me. But now the wonderful Hippocampus Magazine has published Melissa Greenwood’s profile of my work, especially as creator of WITD, spotlighting the WITD method, the synchronous workshop, and the astonishing track record of literary publications (and even award nominations) that have come out of it from the writers who attend.
Profile: Jeannine Ouellette, Author of The Part That Burns and Creator of Writing in the Dark
Melissa is my student and friend and a long-time WITD-er, and she created this intricate, complex piece over the course of the last year after we indulged in a two-hour Zoom conversation while I was at my Boundary Waters cabin cleaning and beautifying it for my dear young friend Zoe who stayed there with her wedding party last summer. The talk Melissa and I had that day was meandering, strange, intimate, and lovely.
I am grateful and a little overwhelmed by having this profile in the world, I guess because it feels a lot more like a tribute than a 360-review, if you know what I mean. And is that ever a wholly comfortable feeling?
Fear not, though, this profile is ultimately on brand with WITD’s shimmers and shards approach as it also delves into one of the most troubled times in my life at a level of literal detail that I almost never address in print or in interviews: my very public divorce back in 2000, something I spoke to Melissa about casually during our conversation, not expecting to see it in the final piece. When I did, I found a way to make peace with it, after adding a few clarifications. It’s okay, I decided. It was almost twenty-five years ago, and these are human experiences we have, living in bodies, living in relationships, living in communities, and living through endings and beginnings. I can be okay with all of these discomforts: the accolades, the revelations, and my own staggering imperfection.
Anyway, given this beautiful and, yes, even uncomfortable profile of me as a teacher by one of my long-time students, I am wondering from you now:
Who were the teachers (not me, please!) who changed the course of your life, for better or worse?
Teachers are powerful in ways that sometimes only manifest later. Tell me your teacher tales. I want to hear all of them! Anyway, you never know where these kinds of snippets can lead, where these remembered bits might take you in your writing later. So many stories waiting to unfold. I can’t wait.
Love,
Jeannine
PS Again, you can read the full Hippocampus profile here if you like.
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