10 For Tuesday – Teachers’ Day

Here we are on the first 10 For Tuesday on the new site. Each week, I’ll post a list of 10 things about what I love, mean a lot to me, stuff I’m thinking about, and possibly the occasional rant post.

Since it’s National Teachers’ Day, I’m going to talk about some of the teachers who influenced me and my work. I’ll be posting links to some of their books on Amazon. Yes, they are referral links. I’ll make a bit of commission. Every bit helps in this late-stage capitalism hellscape.

1. Ms. Parker – Oh, high school. That last institution where we rarely learn our teachers’ first names. Since I studied with her a llllloooooong time ago, I’ve heard she married and changed her name, but I don’t recall what it is. She taught English and was the first teacher who encouraged me to dive into genre fiction as a source of literary merit. She encouraged my imagination and thinking outside the box when it came to completing assignments. Without her, I might never have pursued writing with the dedication I have.
2. Dr. Arlene Clarke – Dr. Clarke taught literature and composition at American River College. I took three classes with her. The big lesson she taught me was that it’s okay to challenge a teacher… IF you can back it up. Early on in the first class I took with her, she assigned a short story. A classic. One of those stories that continues to make its rounds in undergrad lit classes. I hated it, but I didn’t know why. Well, she challenged me to figure out why, so I did. But that’s a post for another day.
3. Alice LaPlante – Alice mentored me through my undergrad years at San Francisco State University. She was the first teacher in college to tell me, “Good writing is good writing, regardless of whether it’s genre or Literary fiction.” I wrote the initial drafts of “Jaludin’s Road” and Dead Weight in her classes, and she cheered me on the whole time. Her book, The Making of a Story, is a solid book for those wishing to deepen their understanding of craft.
4. Matthew Clark Davidson – Matthew and I butted heads… A LOT. He’s quite a brilliant teacher, but our personalities clashed more than a little. To his credit, he called me on my bulshit every single time, both on the page and in the classroom. Matthew inspired me to be more curious about what I don’t know about writing than to rest comfortably in what I think I think I know about writing. His Craft of Fiction class I took in undergrad planted the seeds of what would eventually become The 4 Principles of Engaging Writing. During COVID, I took two Zoom classes with him, and he still continued to challenge my preconceptions. I encourage every serious student of writing fiction to take at least one of his THE LAB workshops and pre-order his book of the same name.
5. Mike McCormack – My first major mentor in grad school, Mike and I went down the esoteric genre fiction rabbit worm hole. We explored weaving rock-solid prose into biting narratives. Mike also encouraged me to not just explore craft more deeply, because of him, I worked on how to articulate my thoughts in ways to help others deepen their understanding of craft. Books: Solar Bones & This Plague of Souls.
6. Patricia Smith – Without Patricia, I wouldn’t have studied poetry. During my fiction MFA, she kept trying to get me to switch to poetry. I told her, “I’m a fiction guy. I like stories.” She replied, “We’re all storytellers.” BOOM! Mind exploded. More than that, some of my most powerful work came from her workshops. Blood Dazzler & Incendiary Art
7. Brian Turner – When I made the choice to return to grad school to study poetry, I had a plan. I knew which teachers I wanted to work with, in which order. Brian had other plans. He decided to take me under his wing for my first semester. I’m grateful he did. He went above and beyond to bring me up to speed on the craft of poetry to execute my work at a graduate level. The work we did together laid the foundation for my success — not just in school, but also in my continuing poetic journey after graduation. Books: My Life as a Foreign Country & Here Bullet
8. Laura Wetherington – My studies in poetry with Laura started with watching a documentary about the architect Frank Gehry. Applying Gehry’s philosophy of architecture to write didn’t so much as cause another mind eruption as much as it shifted me into a completely different paradigm of thinking about writing construction. Laura’s guidance got me thinking in such new angles, I buried a series of letters for a year in order to turn the remains into a book of poetry, among other crazy projects.
9.  Laura McCullough – She awakened me to the grand and amazing world of literary criticism. I dreaded the class, but when I read her syllabus, I saw she had quoted Doctor Who. All through the class, I realized geeks and nerds have many of the same kinds of conversation literary critics do, we just don’t have a unified vocabulary of terms to use when we do it. If not for the time I spent learning with Laure, The Geek’s Guide to Literary Theory wouldn’t exist.
10. Gayle Brandeis – I don’t think any other teacher has affected my writing and my life as much as Gayle Brandeis. We worked together on both fiction and poetry. Multiple books exist because of Gayle’s teaching. Some are published, some are waiting to be published. She taught me to be kind to myself in my life and in my writing. Both in fiction and in poetry, she guided me through some heavily cathartic writing — writing that changed and saved my life. One day I hope to be even a fraction of the teacher she is. Books: Selfless Bliss of the Body, My Life With the Lincolns, & Drawing Breath

Tell me about some of the teachers in your life in the comments.