Overview

By turns reflective, entertaining and moving, this book reveals how some of the most influential and best loved writers of our time were shaped by their inspirational teachers. Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee, Margaret Drabble, Stephen Greenblatt, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Andrew Motion, Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina and Paul Theroux are among the twenty contributors of original essays to this landmark volume celebrating masters of the teaching profession. What makes a good teacher? What lights the writer’s creative fire? How can the teacher shape the writer? This book answers these questions and more, describing the powerful influence of mentors at an impressionable time of life, portraying the heart-warming transition from pupil to friend, and exploring the lasting impact that truly great teachers can have on their students. To have teachers who care, and to have such notable writers capture their spirit, is ample reason to read Dale Salwak's elegant celebration of the ‘noble profession’ and the world-renowned writers that it helped to hone.

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9781350272262

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Reviews

"All the essays deserve high praise. Seldom does one encounter such a wealth of good prose within the covers of a single volume. The book is itself inspirational, teaching much about writing and teaching, thinking and living. -- Éilís Ní Dhuibhne * The Irish Times * The best are excellent, memorializing through striking detail teachers – some exceptionally charismatic – who understood their pupils as well as they did the importance of all they were passing on to them. -- Catharine Morris * Times Literary Supplement * I found myself pleasurably immersed in the recollections of a network of individuals for whom writing became not only the centre of their universe but a necessary condition for living. ... [A] delightfully entertaining collection. * Bennett Arnold Society Newsletter * Celebrates how some of the leading writers of our time have been shaped by inspirational teachers. * Choice * Dale Salwak has created a collection that should be required reading for all prospective teachers. Elegant praise for their teachers comes from Jay Parini, Margaret Drabble, Dana Gioia, and many others. -- Linda Wagner-Martin, Hanes Professor, University of North Carolina, USA There is no model, no formula. Chance encounters, dusty school teachers, maverick professors, illiterate grandfathers. Twenty authors ruminate on the relationships that lit the first steps of their careers. Nothing could be more fascinating. -- Tim Parks, author of 'Where I'm Reading From, the Changing World of Books' Writers and their Teachers offers a thought-provoking read to anyone interested in understanding the myriad ways a young writer's wish to write can be massaged from dormancy, their capacities strengthened, by encountering the ""right"" teacher in their youth. The best among the 20 essays describe the enhanced mastery of writing made possible when two people pay careful attention to each other. -- Janna Malamud Smith, author of 'An Absorbing Errand: How Artists and Craftsmen Make Their Way to Mastery' The gifts are different — legitimacy, confidence, the value of hard work, skepticism, provocation — but the gratitude is the same. A collection of moving tributes to the often mysterious figures who have, firmly, gently, and at times unconsciously made literature seem possible. -- Stacy Schiff, author of 'The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams'"

"I found myself pleasurably immersed in the recollections of a network of individuals for whom writing became not only the centre of their universe but a necessary condition for living. ... [A] delightfully entertaining collection. * Bennett Arnold Society Newsletter * All the essays deserve high praise. Seldom does one encounter such a wealth of good prose within the covers of a single volume. The book is itself inspirational, teaching much about writing and teaching, thinking and living. -- Éilís Ní Dhuibhne * The Irish Times * Celebrates how some of the leading writers of our time have been shaped by inspirational teachers. * Choice * Dale Salwak has created a collection that should be required reading for all prospective teachers. Elegant praise for their teachers comes from Jay Parini, Margaret Drabble, Dana Gioia, and many others. -- Linda Wagner-Martin, Hanes Professor, University of North Carolina, USA There is no model, no formula. Chance encounters, dusty school teachers, maverick professors, illiterate grandfathers. Twenty authors ruminate on the relationships that lit the first steps of their careers. Nothing could be more fascinating. -- Tim Parks, author of 'Where I'm Reading From, the Changing World of Books' Writers and their Teachers offers a thought-provoking read to anyone interested in understanding the myriad ways a young writer's wish to write can be massaged from dormancy, their capacities strengthened, by encountering the ""right"" teacher in their youth. The best among the 20 essays describe the enhanced mastery of writing made possible when two people pay careful attention to each other. -- Janna Malamud Smith, author of 'An Absorbing Errand: How Artists and Craftsmen Make Their Way to Mastery' The gifts are different — legitimacy, confidence, the value of hard work, skepticism, provocation — but the gratitude is the same. A collection of moving tributes to the often mysterious figures who have, firmly, gently, and at times unconsciously made literature seem possible. -- Stacy Schiff, author of 'The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams'"

Dale Salwak has created a collection that should be required reading for all prospective teachers. Elegant praise for their teachers comes from Jay Parini, Margaret Drabble, Dana Gioia, and many others. -- Linda Wagner-Martin, Hanes Professor, University of North Carolina, USA There is no model, no formula. Chance encounters, dusty school teachers, maverick professors, illiterate grandfathers. Twenty authors ruminate on the relationships that lit the first steps of their careers. Nothing could be more fascinating. -- Tim Parks, author of 'Where I'm Reading From, the Changing World of Books' Writers and their Teachers offers a thought-provoking read to anyone interested in understanding the myriad ways a young writer's wish to write can be massaged from dormancy, their capacities strengthened, by encountering the right teacher in their youth. The best among the 20 essays describe the enhanced mastery of writing made possible when two people pay careful attention to each other. -- Janna Malamud Smith, author of 'An Absorbing Errand: How Artists and Craftsmen Make Their Way to Mastery'

Author Information

Dale Salwak is Professor of English Literature at Southern California’s Citrus College, USA. His 28 books include Living with a Writer (2004), Teaching Life: Letters from a Life in Literature (2008), Writers and Their Mothers (2018), and studies of Kingsley Amis, John Braine, A. J. Cronin, Philip Larkin, Barbara Pym, Carl Sandburg, Anne Tyler, and John Wain. He is a recipient of Purdue University’s Distinguished Alumni Award as well as a research grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is also a frequent contributor to the (London) Times Higher Education magazine and the Times Educational Supplement.

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