A Good Week at the Humber Summer Workshop

Last week I was fortunate to be teaching at the Humber School for Writers Summer Workshop in Creative Writing in Toronto, alongside my fellow faculty members Nino Ricci, Richard Bausch, Wayson Choy, Isabel Huggan, Julia Glass, Olive Senior, Bruce Jay Friedman, John Metcalf, Guy Vanderhaeghe, Alistair MacLeod, Erika De Vasconcelos, David Bezmozgis, and Frieda Wishinsky.

Though I’ve taught the workshop for several years, I always wonder and worry beforehand how the week will go, how the group chemistry will develop. My group of five this time were diverse in interests and background – three are working on serious novels, one is writing a travelogue/memoir, and the fifth writes short stories – and they seemed a little subdued at first.

I had to work harder than usual to get them to laugh at my jokes, but by the end of the week, friendships had formed among them, they appeared willing to take at least some of my writing advice, and if they weren’t exactly eating out of my hand, they did seem to enjoy the Sea Salt Chocolate Chip Nut Cookies I baked to mark the bittersweet moment of our parting, when, after a convivial and thought-provoking week spent sharing the writing life, we all left the workshop to go write in solitude.