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Or send me your own news and comments in snail mail: Sharman Apt Russell P.O. Box 303 Gila, NM 88038 USA
I am available to travel as a visiting writer for readings, classroom visits, and workshops.
My teaching philosophy is simple: my goal is to encourage and support a writer’s own authority. To that end, I can serve as an editor and help writers better revise their work. I can model and teach how to talk about writing. I can help writers feel more centered in who they are as writers and why they write. And I can do these things across a range of ages and abilities.
Writing is such a dynamic process. Writing is a way of thinking and feeling more deeply. Writing is action—neurons firing, synapses snapping. Writing dislodges things in the mind. Writing sets things adrift. Writing makes new connections. Writing brings together ideas and sparks new ideas.
Writing is not transcription. Most of us don’t have some answer which we then copy onto the page. We are not pedagogues. We are explorers. We write out of a question, a blank spot on the map. The process of writing leads to an answer and, as often as not, to more questions. Another blank spot on the map.
My goal as a teacher is to be part of that journey.
For some thirty years, I have taught graduate and undergraduate classes at Western New Mexico University in Silver City. For the last twenty years, I have mentored creative nonfiction in the low-residency MFA program at Antioch University in Los Angeles.
“A deep reverence for nature shines throughout Russell’s rich, enjoyable text.”— Kirkus Reviews
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