My Hubbard Hall short story class went into its second week this morning, and I thought it took off. The class was limited to eight people, and the students are diverse – two high school students, a nurse practitioner, a retired minister, a yoga teacher and massage therapist who travels with famous rock starts, several writers. There are some wonderful stories bubbling up – a charismatic child struggling out of poverty in the Mississippi Delta, a middle-aged man who decides to go to Times Square to see the ball drop, a young volunteer in a school library who encounters a dying mime (and writes about mostly in text), a mother who warns her son against playing the lottery and then wins.

In each class, the students bring their work and show them to the other students and then we talk about them. It is powerful to see how much the students support one another, help each other. Feedback is so essential for writing, how else can we improve and grow? For me, the biggest challenge is to overcome the hideous way in which writing is generally taught in America and to get the writers to see that their stories are important and good, if they are authentic and brave. The idea is for them to feel good about their work, not bad, to encourage them, not fill their heads with rules and do’s and dont’s. I want them to have fun, to have confidence in themselves, to let their inner spirits, their inner writers come out and be free. This class is special, I bet we go past the four scheduled meetings