Tom Spanbauer is a Pulitzer Nominated author and the founder of Dangerous Writing. As a writer he has explored issues of race, of sexual identity, of how we make a family for ourselves in order to surmount the limitations of the families into which we are born. His three published novels Faraway Places, The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon, and In The City Of Shy Hunters, and soon to be published (May 15 Houghton Mifflin pub.) NOW IS THE HOUR, are notable for their combination of a fresh and lyrical prose style with solid storytelling.////////////////As a teacher his innovative approach combines close attention to language with a large-hearted openness to what he calls 'the sore place'--that place within each of us that is the source for stories that no one else can tell. His introductory workshop is an underground legend among emerging writers in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. The community of writers that has formed around him is dedicated to the proposition that "Fiction is the lie that tells the truth truer."////////////Here is what Tom Spanbauer says about the art of teaching:If you asked my mother how she made pie crust, she never said a word. Instead, she just lifted her hand and rubbed her fingers against her thumb. That's the way it is for me and teaching. It has a feel. I'm not someone who knows and the student is someone who does not know. Each person who is a student of writing is a student of life. I too am a student. Good writers know that about themselves.My job as a teacher is to first create a safe environment. It is a terrifying thing to bring your inner life out of the closet and read it aloud to a group. Secondly, I must listen for the heart break, the rage, the shame, the fear that are hidden within the words. Then I must respect where each individual student is in relation to his or her broken heart and act accordingly. Most of all, at the beginning, as a teacher, I must give the permission to do it wrong. In the wrongness there is a treasure. If a wrong note is played long enough, the dissonance can become the speech of angels. And last, I think, and most important, but important because it is last, when my relationship with the student is solid, and when the student has a strong foothold in his or her writing, I bring out my jungle red fingernails, play the devil's advocate, be the bad cop, the irreverant fool--whatever it takes to teach perseverance, self-trust, and discipline. Because I encourage excellence, and each of us has our own excellent, and excellence only comes with not being afraid of who you are. To learn to speak your truth honestly with a clear vioice takes lots of practice, and every trick in the book to keep you going down the arduous, cruel, lonely, glorious path of a writer.Tom lives, writes, and teaches in Portland Oregon.
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