Description

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The poems and short stories collected in this volume are the outcome of fifteen years of an amazingly successful experiment: asking accomplished writers to teach workshops in juvenile detention facilities, homeless shelters, inner-city schools, and schools for newly arrived immigrants. Follow these teacher-artists in the National Writers Corps on their journey into the halls and streets of America's diverse neighborhoods as they enrich the lives and creativity of their students--and find their own voices changed in the process. As one writer-teacher puts it: "Writing in community gathers us around the proverbial campfire and reminds us why we do this: because hearing stories helps us make sense of the world, and because telling them helps us make sense of ourselves."

About the Author

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Chad Sweeney is the author of three poetry collections; his poems and translations have appeared widely, including Best American Poetry 2008. Sweeney is coeditor of Parthenon West Review, a journal of contemporary poetry and translation, and is a PhD candidate in literature at Western Michigan University. He taught for the San Francisco WritersCorps for seven years.