The very gifted students in my Bedlam Farm Writer’s Workshop will all be reading from their rich and diverse works Saturday at 2 p.m. at the Battenkill Bookstore in Cambridge, N.Y. (518 677 2515). The public is welcome.

This class is a great labor of love for me.

I’ve been teaching writing on and off for more than 2o years, and this is the most remarkable group of people I’ve met yet. My wish has always been to encourage writing, not to stifle it. We’re getting there, we meet weekly, talk openly and supportively, and explore new ways of putting our work and ourselves out there, as creative people always have to do.

The people in my class are amazing, they are fascinating to talk to and listen to, people like Rachel Barlow, a brilliant bi-polar writer and mother and painter who has used creativity to build a loving and successful love and family and career.

Each member of the class will read a brief excerpt from their poems or essays. I’ll  read a few paragraphs from my next book, “Gus and Bud.”

Rachel is a creative wonder, she is a successful author, painter, artist, cartoonist and blogger. She also publishes a very beautiful blog called Picking My Battles.

And Jackie Thorne, a writer/poet/animal activist and nurse who has just published her second book of very beautiful poetry.

Jackie’s latest book, which she will be reading from, is called To Catch The Light. And it does.

And Amy Herring, a novelist and poet who is finishing up a rich YA fantasy novel and will read from her new book of poems, Flounder.

And Susan Popper, a medical technician who has left her Long Island life behind,  moved to the country and changed her life, started a blog, written openly and touchingly about her life-long struggle with obesity,  and is chronicling her own spiritual and physical rebirth.

And Caroline Ashton, a writer and poet and singer in my small town of Cambridge, who writes the most beautiful poems about small town life and also life in the British hamlet where her beloved and late husband Noel lived  and where they met. It took me five years to talk her into joining my class, it was worth the wait.

There is also Sandy Van Dyke, an author, poet and former academic, she has spent much of her life exploring the boundaries between black and white, between white privilege and African-American life. She is writing a book on whiteness. She has also worked to help community development in Africa.

The mysterious and exotic Carolyn Smith is a new comer to the class – she moved her from Seattle with 13 rescue cats, who she refused to abandon there – and she writes about her life working for British Airways, traveling the world, and deciding that cats are more reliable than people.

She is starting a blog, it will be a mecca for cat lovers.

Jen Baker-Porazinski is a family practitioner who is writing a book about making health care more human. She writes and speaks eloquently and from the unique point of view of a doctor about her passionate struggle for more humane medicine.

It took me years to figure out how to develop a philosophy of teaching that is supportive, enabling and creative. My goal is to help people find their voice and their develop their own unique creative spark.

I learned first hand the difference between teaching grammar and teaching writing. They are not the same thing. I tried charging for the class one year, but I couldn’t do it. I don’t charge for teaching, it’s a writer’s responsibility to give something back.

This group of people makes it so worthwhile to teach. As I grow older, I become more conscious of Joseph Campbell’s idea – the work of the older people is to share what they have learned and know and pass it along, for better or for worse. This class is the manifestation of that work for me.

So  come by to Battenkill Books if you live in the area.  If not, I’ll continue to share the work of these talented people.

This is not a local blog, I am aware the vast majority of you live elsewhere, but this is such an important part of my life, I am grateful to be able to share it.

These are a remarkable group of people with fascinating things to say. They are well worth listening to, they are a testament to the idea that we all have stories to tell, and they are important. Book store details here.