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It’s just another day at Interlochen when there’s a Tom Hanks sighting on campus and the lead singer of Metallica’s daughter is one of your students. I have to admit, even as a teacher striving [...]

I have to say I felt a little more than ambivalent about seeing Lucinda Williams in concert this summer after I purchased her latest album, Blessed on iTunes. Where was the old jug band Lucinda? [...]

It’s high time I attend to the task at hand which, for me, is always the ongoing relationship between landscape and story. To this end, readers of The Writing Life well know I love quoting [...]

Last week’s found poetry in altered books was such a success, that I decided to continue the art/writing hybrids this week in my own classroom, adapting an exercise I learned from visual [...]

I hit the gym four times during Round Two of my self-imposed boot camp, working the Wavemaster and heavy bag each time, along with kata training using the mirrors for precision and cario training [...]

The students entered that wonderful space of focus again this afternoon as we continued working on our found poems in altered books. As someone who has spent a lot of time with teenagers in [...]

A few times each session, I teach what Interlochen calls “forum.” This involves all 39 Intermediate (middle school) Creative Writing Majors gathering in The Great Room for an hour-long activity [...]

One requirement of the Intermediate Creative Writing Majors at Interlochen Summer Arts Camp is to experience “workshop.” For most 6-9th graders, this is a first. They’ve never had their work [...]

On July 1st, I join Fit For You health club. It’s the only one in town with a heavy bag that isn’t a fight club. They’re letting me in for no fees up front and $80 for 2 months. It’ll cost [...]

I love walking to the lake a night. Just a few minutes through the cooling evening air and I’m here, sand beneath my sneakers and the steady lull of lapping as water pushes against shore. One of [...]