Faculty Profiles
Sandi Wisenberg
 Essayist and fiction writer Sandi Wisenberg became codirector
of the MCW program in 2004. To dodge the distractions of
home and the writer's curse of procrastination, she
takes paper and pen - and sometimes her laptop - to
one of her favorite Chicago coffeehouses, Café Avanti
or Emerald City Coffee.
Q:How do you use your experience as a writer in your teaching?
SW:I tell students that
any problem they've had with writing, I've had - and I've
probably had
it worse. I've had problems with structure, with synthesizing
information, with loading a piece with too much "stuff,"
with being afraid to write.
Q:Does teaching make it hard to find time to write?
SW:Many of the students in the MCW program are working full
time and have the same conflict. When I'm teaching
I devote myself to my students, but I'm still a writer,
too.
Q:What's the workshop experience
like?
SW:Students are very supportive of one another. We discuss the
writing of two students each week, pointing out what works
and what doesn't. MCW workshops also have a reading
component, which is important because many writers and
many writing students don't read enough. In my creative
nonfiction workshop I pick pieces by writers like Phillip
Lopate - I call him Mr. Essay because he's
helped re-popularize the essay form.
Q:What advice do you give to writing students?
SW:If you're presenting a piece in a workshop, you shouldn't
bring something that you think is perfect, because you'll
be disappointed if you get anything less than fulsome praise.
Bring something that's driving you crazy, that you're
ready to fling against the wall. The group is there to help
you get unstuck. We emphasize revision. I revised and rewrote
one short story over seven years - and it became the
title story of my collection.
John Keene
 Assistant
professor of English and African American Studies John Keene
says that the MCW program provides students with far more
than a degree used for teaching.
JK: This program facilitates
the process of writing regularly and of becoming part of a
writing community, two things that are vital. It also develops
the student's ability to revise work and take criticism
constructively. These are all valuable and important things
if you want to be a writer.
Q: You teach workshops for the creative
writing program, which are unique in SCS. How do you approach
these classes?
JK: I view all my classes
as a conversation, but one within a workshop framework. Students
bring their work and I have everyone in the class read it
before providing feedback. But I also assign short stories
and usually one novel for reading, and we discuss those in
class just as we do the students' work. Students also
write three or four short, analytical pieces during the course
of the quarter in order to delve more deeply into the structure
of accomplished writing. We explore what a writer is doing
in terms of point of view and perspective to make a story
work.
Q: What do you enjoy most about teaching
in SCS?
JK: The level of enthusiasm
and persistence is tremendous. The best part of all is seeing
students translate their thoughts and ideas into palpable
written forms of expression, then seeing their revisions become
good - publishable - works of art. That, to me,
is extraordinary, because it's so difficult. Frequently
I see students who accomplish things with their writing that
they did not think possible.
Aleksander "Sasha" Hemon
 Aleksandar
Hemon has a deep need to write fiction, which he does at home,
in the morning mostly, while drinking Turkish coffee. But
he also enjoys teaching the writing process, which he does
for the master of arts in creative writing program at the
School of Continuing Studies. Neither endeavor is easy, he
says.
AH: Everyone who writes,
writes with a spoken or unspoken ambition that one day they
might be tremendously successful, which of course will not
happen for everyone. But there is no good or bad writing in
an absolute sense. What I tell my students is that writing
is reading in reverse. Understanding the choices that other
writers make can help students understand their own choices.
I try to help students recognize the different possibilities
within the choices they make.
Q: So some of your students have had
success before, and some of them are looking to be transformed
somehow. What is it that they seem to all have in common?
AH: The people who come
to this program in SCS are very serious about what they do.
They have a goal in mind and they have devotion. Most of them
work and are at SCS because they really, really want to learn.
It's an adult atmosphere, in the best sense.
Q: Do you write every day?
AH: When I am working
on a project, I work at it steadily and write as often as
I can. But there are long stretches when I am not really writing
anything. I might be reading, or researching something.
Q: And this is fine? It's okay
not to make yourself sit in front of the blank screen?
AH: It is not only fine,
it is necessary. You have to be able not to write. There must
be gestation time. For me, writing comes out of a deep need.
I let the need drive my schedule, rather than the schedule
driving my need.
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