College brings visiting writers to Blount County high schools

What makes a writer?

That question and others were addressed at a recent authors’ teach-in organized by Pellissippi State for English students participating in the College’s Dual Enrollment program at Blount County high schools.

The Dual Enrollment program provides qualified high school seniors an opportunity to take college-level courses and at the same time complete the corresponding high school requirements.

The teach-in—conducted at Alcoa, Heritage and William Blount high schools in November—marked the second in a series of workshops between area authors and students in the Dual Enrollment program. Last spring, the College brought writers to Knox County high schools.

“We wanted to give our Dual Enrollment students a college experience,” said Edward Francisco, Pellissippi State’s writer-in-residence, who organized and participates in the teach-in. “What better way than to introduce them to local authors, some of whom are frequent visitors to our campus?

“We feel it’s important for students to be acquainted with the literary traditions and to hear what flesh-and-blood writers have to say about their craft.”

Francisco, who has published novels, short stories, poetry and essays, will meet with Dual Enrollment students at Maryville High School this semester.

Loletta Clouse, author of the novels “Wilder,” “The Homesteads” and “Mallie,” conducted a seminar at Alcoa High. Jeanne MacDonald, a member of the Knoxville Writers’ Guild who has published fiction in various magazines, journals and anthologies, met with William Blount students, and Connie Jordan Green, whose novels “Emmy” and “The War at Home” have received critical acclaim, visited Heritage High School.

“Students especially appreciated this opportunity,” Francisco said. “Teachers report that as a result of these visits, students have begun to read and explore works by their favorite authors.”

At Alcoa High, Clouse discussed the importance of being a keen observer of life and how remembering those observations can be central to developing a work of fiction.

The two most important traits for a writer to cultivate, she said, are discipline and perseverance. As a writer of historical fiction, Clouse said researching the topic is also of critical importance.

“I read everything I can get my hands on until I’m blind, stupid and crazy with it,” Clouse said.

MacDonald talked to William Blount students about choosing the right voice in writing fiction and about how to create and develop characters.

“This is what I love about writing. If you create those characters well, the characters are going to do what they want to do,” MacDonald said. “If I try to make a character do something that he or she doesn’t want to do, I find it doesn’t work.”

At Heritage, Green took students through some exercises in writing poetry. Like the other visiting authors, she emphasized working with experiences and feelings drawn from students’ observations of the world around them.

The workshops help students realize that college aims to put them in touch with the world beyond the four walls of the classroom, says Kathy Byrd, Pellissippi State’s Dual Enrollment coordinator.

“The authors did a fantastic job of expressing both the joy of writing and the difficult nature of it,” said Byrd.

“The students had the opportunity to hear about the need for discipline and the hard work of revision, as well as the astonishing feeling that occurs when a fictional character takes on a life of her own and the satisfaction of crafting a poem or passage that captures a particular emotion.”

Francisco says he hopes the writers’ workshops will continue as a regular part of Dual Enrollment English classes in the future.

“We hope the word gets out that Pellissippi State, and its English Department in particular, is concerned with the education of all our region’s students,” he said.

To learn more about the Dual Enrollment program, contact Kathy Byrd, kbyrd@pstcc.edu or 981-5320.

"Inside Pellissippi" is a bi-monthly electronic publication produced by the Marketing and Communications Office for the faculty and staff of Pellissippi State Technical Community College, 10915 Hardin Valley Road, P.O. Box 22990, Knoxville, Tennessee 37933-0990. All suggestions and comments should be sent to Julia Wood (jwood@pstcc.edu).

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