CLASSES

My 34-year teaching career ended in June, 2023, at a week-long workshop on the Umatilla Indian Reservation, with writers attending from Oregon, Washington and California. After twenty years of taking writers abroad, it was wonderful to be welcomed to a nation so close to home. There we met with elder Antone Minthorn, toured the amazing Tamástslikt museum with founder-director Bobbie Conner, and heard a stunning lecture on First Foods by Wenix Red Elk, meanwhile writing in the mornings and gathering for discussions in the late afternoons.

Having never expected to be a teacher, Jon Sinclair’s 1989 phone call inviting me to develop a creative writing class for Marylhurst College came as a surprise. I began as a part-timer, teaching short fiction and stayed for twenty years. Eventually, my classes ranged across three graduate writing programs, a writing certificate program that I designed for Portland State’s extension division (as we called it then), and lots of workshops, including Haystack and Sitka on the Oregon coast and, finally, Traveler’s Mind, my annual ten-day immersion in observation and a disciplined daily writing practice.

Although I appreciate the extra writing time, I do miss the classes that gave me such joy. I continue to stay in touch with my most committed students, almost all of whom are now publishing work of their own.

Sunset on the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation