Expos Teachers Discuss Careers At Winthrop House

Four Expository Writing teachers gathered in Winthrop House last night to discuss what how and why they write.

"The whole business of becoming a writer is one long shot," Felicia Lamport a satirical writer and playwright said. "I got into this whole mess by just being lucky," Lamport added, explaining that in her college days she was paid $75 to write satires of the school football games.

Nancy K. Piore, who is taking the year off from her duties to work on a play, said she "never expected to make money from my Fiction Expos writing since it was an art." And Jonathan Aaron, whose book of poems Second Sight has just been published, added, "writing has nothing to do with money--they're worlds apart."

"Aimlessness" drove Aaron to begin writing during college, but only when an established poet said that he liked one line out of the six poems Aaron had shown him did Aaron begin to work "more or less obsessively." he said.

Jadith B. Coben said she also began her writing career indirectly, thinking of it as a career she could always fall back on. But her plans for receiving a teaching degree were interrupted by a 1960's concern for doing something "socially relevant." After working as a child psychologist, and teaching at Goddard College in Vermont, she began to question her career and started writing again.

The question and answer session ended with a discussion on Harvard's limited number of advanced writing classes. Cohen said that "the value of writing class is debatable," while Piore said that students need time in their schedules to write. Harvard, she said, "looks at creative writing as frivolity."