If writing is a craft, how do we classify the teaching of writing? Apprenticeship? Pedagogy? Art? Is it even possible to teach creative writing, or are we essentially teaching students how to better read their own and others’ work? Together with moderator John Oakes, four authors, editors, and teachers came to our stage to tease out answers to some of these more philosophical questions.
Presented in partnership with the Evergreen Review.
In Conversation
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Bonnie Chau
Bonnie Chau
Bonnie Chau is a writer from Southern California. She is the author of the short story collection All Roads Lead to Blood, and has spent most of the last two decades working in nonprofits, bookstores, schools, and restaurants. She teaches creative writing and translation at the universities of Columbia and Fordham; is an editor at 4Columns, the Evergreen Review, and Public Books; and serves on the board of directors of the American Literary Translators Association.
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Porochista Khakpour
Porochista Khakpour
Porochista Khakpour’s most recent book, the essay collection Brown Album: Essays on Exile & Identity (Vintage, May 2020), has been praised in the New York Times, O, The Oprah Magazine, TIME, Goop, USA Today, and many other publications. Her next book, Tehrangeles: A Novel, is forthcoming from Pantheon. She is the author of the novels The Last Illusion (Bloomsbury, 2014) and Sons and Other Flammable Objects (Grove, 2007). Her memoir Sick (Harper Perennial, 2018) was a Best Book of the Year according to Time magazine, Real Simple, Entropy, Mental Floss, Bitch Media, Autostraddle, the Paris Review, LitHub, and more. She is a contributing editor to the Evergreen Review.
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Jee Leong Koh
Jee Leong Koh
Jee Leong Koh is the author of Steep Tea (Carcanet), named a Best Book of the Year by U.K.’s Financial Times and a Finalist by Lambda Literary. He has also published the hybrid work of fiction Snow at 5 PM: Translations of an Insignificant Japanese Poet (Bench Press). His new Carcanet book Inspector Inspector was released in August, 2022. He is poetry editor of the Evergreen Review.
Photo Credit: Guy E. Humphrey
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Dale Peck
Dale Peck
Dale Peck, editor-in-chief of the Evergreen Review, is the author of fourteen books in a variety of genres, including Visions and Revisions, Martin and John, Hatchet Jobs, and Sprout. His fiction and criticism have appeared in dozens of publications, and have earned him two O. Henry Awards, a Pushcart Prize, a Lambda Literary Award, and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. He lives in New York City, where he has taught in the New School’s Graduate Writing Program since 1999.
Photo Credit: Lou Peralta
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John Oakes
John Oakes
John Oakes is publisher of the Evergreen Review. He is a co-founder of OR Books, where he is now editor-at-large, and has been editor or publisher at many independent presses. For a number of years he taught book publishing at the New School and the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. His book The Fast: The History, Science, Philosophy, and Promise of Fasting is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster.
Photo Credit: Miriam Berkley
