Kechi Ladapo

I now think of myself as a writer. I didn't realize it on my own though. It was after Sula was published; I was talking to my editor (Robert Gottlieb of Knopf) one day, and he said, "This is what you are going to be when you grow up. This is it." I said, "A writer?" He said, "That's right. Of all those other little things you do, this is it. This i... See more

“I am searching for that which is real of my heart, and which when completed I can stand humble to one side of and say: ‘This is it, this is how I feel, this is my honest interpretation of the world; this is not influenced by money, or trickery, or pressure...except the pressure of my soul.’”

The plan boiled down to the following: Make students write more all through the core, and improvement will follow. It really wasn’t a bad premise. But reading samples of student papers semester after semester, I wasn’t sure it quite delivered. Why not? I have four reasons to propose here that are relevant to the rest of us.

1. The best writers read a l

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