T228.
The Sentence as Itself: Vivifying Grammar in Writing Classrooms
Thursday, March 24, 2022
3:20 pm to 4:35 pm
Say the word "grammar," and most students flee, but attention to the mechanics of the sentence as a dynamic form can illuminate new possibilities for writers in any genre. Four writer-teachers with experience from grade school to grad school will speak about the generative potential that conversations about grammar and syntax have in their classrooms and their own work. Challenging ideas of “correctness,” they engage students in understanding how grammar underpins voice, vernacular, and expression.
Participants
B.K. Fischer is the author of five books of poetry—Mutiny Gallery, St. Rage's Vault, Radioapocrypha, My Lover's Discourse, and Ceive—and a critical study of ekphrasis, Museum Mediations. She teaches the Comma Sutra, a crossgenre seminar on grammar and syntax for MFA writers, at Columbia University.
Camille Guthrie is the director of undergraduate writing initiatives at Bennington College. She teaches essay writing, critical theory, ekphrasis, poetry, gender studies, grammar, and first-year writing. She is the author of four books of poetry, including Diamonds (2021).
Emily Suazo is an educator, writer, and translator based in New York City. She is currently an instructor in the university writing program for the core at Columbia University.
Bronwen Tate is an assistant professor of teaching in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. She is the author of The Silk the Moths Ignore, and her poems and essays appear in Contemporary Literature and The Rumpus.
Jared Jackson holds an MFA from Columbia University. He has been awarded fellowships from the Center for Fiction, MacDowell, and Baldwin for the Arts. His work appears in the New York Times Book Review, the Yale Review, Guernica, and more. He is the literary programs manager at PEN America.
