Tag / writing

by Cila Warncke

On Primary Sources with Katherine Cottle

Welcome to ‘Between the Lines’ – interviews with teachers, writers and writing teachers on specific aspects of their craft.

Photo courtesy Katherine Cottle

In this week’s interview, author and Goucher College writing professor Katherine Cottle discusses the practice and possibilities of primary source research in creative and critical projects, which is embodied in several of her five books, including The Hidden Heart of Charm City: Baltimore Letters and Lives, I Remain Yours: Secret Mission Love Letters of My Mormon Great-Grandparents: 1900-1903, and Baltimore Side Show.

According to her bio, she two “feisty” children and a propensity for burning dinner (“I’m a horrible cook,” she assures me cheerfully). Cottle also writes poetry, non-fiction, cultural criticism, essays and reviews.

An Expanding World of Words

Growing up in a “farm-like” conservancy area of Baltimore County, Maryland, Cottle – the eldest of three children – sought out nooks behind rose bushes or slices of space between buildings where she could spin yarns in peace. “I was very quiet, externally. More of a listener,” she recalls. “But I was wordy internally: talking to myself, making observations, telling stories. I was writing, mentally.”

Cottle had the good fortune to attend a public high school which offered creative writing courses (“now, you’re lucky to get a unit, much less a whole class”). Her creative writing teacher, with whom she is still in touch, encouraged students to enter competitions and submit work for publication. This was important for Cottle, who was 14 years old when her first piece appeared in the local paper: “It was a big deal to have readers outside my ninth grade classroom.”

Building on her positive high school experience, Cottle went on to earn a B.A. in English from Goucher College, an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Maryland at College Park, and a Ph.D. in English/Professional Writing and American Literature from Morgan State University.

Paths and Possibilities

Asked what steered her toward teaching writing, Cottle chuckles: “It wasn’t, ‘this is what I’m going to do with the rest of my life’. I still don’t know that. But no matter what I’ve done, writing has pulled me in its direction.”

Although she has not always, or exclusively, taught, Cottle has educated writers from early teens to adulthood, in settings ranging from intensive summer programs, to tutoring, to middle and high schools, to her current full-time role at Goucher.

There, she teaches courses including first-year writing, poetry, professional writing and senior capstone courses, allowing Cottle guide students from the beginning to the end of their undergraduate studies. “Every class, every semester is a new experience,” she says. “You are starting a new adventure every time – every class, every day. That requires strength, enthusiasm and a positive attitude.”

Strength, enthusiasm and a positive attitude are rewarded by reciprocal learning. Cottle cherishes interaction with students and colleagues as means to cultivate her own practice. “It allows me to reflect on my own work [at] a helpful disconnect. I have to step back and recognise where I am in that picture.”

Her goal as an educator is to pay forward the “gifts I got from my mentors… to inspire others to develop the command and craft of their work so they feel confident as writers. Whether first year or senior capstone, [I want them] to feel that what they’re learning will help them beyond the classroom. Hopefully they see how writing will play a role in their life, how communication will help them going forward.”

Photo by Catarina Carvalho on Unsplash

On Primary Source Research in Creative and Critical Projects

Q: What is primary source research in this context?

A: Opening your research lens beyond the standard scholarly essay. It means looking for non-traditional sources, things you won’t find in Google. Some might not be valued by the academy, but provide scope for humanities documentation. For example, my dissertation focused on intimate letters from 1850-1950 in Baltimore. Some [were] online, some I had to go to a physical place to see. Others cannot be found, because they were hidden or destroyed.

Q: Why is this type of research significant in critical and creative contexts?

A: It adds unfiltered content. It allows voices which might not typically be found in public settings to be brought to the surface and validates genres beyond the scope of traditional research.

Q: How does one begin?

A: Think of yourself as your own search engine, and create an algorithm. You can start on the internet, but usually you have to go to physical locations, or call or write people to find out if something is in an archive; you might open your research to living sources.

Q: How did you approach researching the intimate letters?

A: My focus was on historical figures. I asked mentors at my university, then cast a wide net to see what I could find. After that, I decided to focus on a particular time period. There were a variety of ways to go about finding letters. Some were available online. Some were in archives. Others were archived but not accessible to the public. I contacted writers who’d been immersed in particular figures and asked them. Part of the excitement of doing a primary source search is that the process becomes part of the journey. You document the search as much as what you find. I wound up with a chapter on letters that we’ll never find, even if they exist.

Q: How do you avoid drowning in details?

A: Set parameters as you go along: here’s where I am, here’s what I found, here’s what I’m going to continue, here’s what I’m going to put off for another time.

Staying within those parameters is useful, but you need to start the process first. It’s a little messy in the beginning, but human beings are messy.

Q: How might a teacher structure a primary source research assignment?

A: I teach a 200-level writing course with units on sources such as diaries, photographs, maps, children’s books, recipes, oral histories, etc. We focus on one genre a week, look at examples, do some practice.

We usually start with photographs. First, students observe exactly what is in the frame. Next is the reflective lens when the student considers what they bring to the image as a viewer. Then they apply an analytical lens to think about the picture’s social significance.

We apply this metaphorical frame to other types of sources, asking: What’s there? What [do I] bring? Why is this important to our world?

Cottle Recommends

Q: An author who does primary source research well?

A: Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. There’s a set of photographs in the middle, you can start the framing there; but the whole book is full of primary sources, [Skloot] pieces together Lacks’ life through research. Plus [she] has such a connection to Baltimore. I like to use articles or examples connected to place, so if students are local it gives them another perspective.

Q: A piece of writing that changed your life?

A: Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980 by Lucille Clifton. Hers was one of the first readings I went to; she had such humor, her work was so in-depth and thoughtful. But she was also unapologetic about loving The Price is Right. It showed me you could be a writer and be real, you could bring your strengths to writing in a way that was unique to you.

Q: A classic you love to teach?

A: Poets like Lucille Clifton, Anne Sexton, Tyehimba Jess – I’m not sure I could pick just one. A collection of women’s poetry from the late 20th century would be perfect.

Q: A contemporary work you love to teach?

A: I enjoy Billy Collins work. There is a simplicity about it, with a deep foundation, but also wit. He takes the human experience seriously and not seriously at the same time.

Q: A book about writing every writing student should read?

A: Bird by Bird: Some Notes on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott. Students connect with it.

Q: A living writer you’d love to hang out with?

A: Jeanette Winterson. I’ve only read two or three of her books, including Written on the Body and The Passion, but they left a physical feeling. The impact lingers, they are so powerful. She and Toni Morrison have that – they are in a whole ‘nother category. It is hard to find the language to describe, but you feel it at a cellular level.

Q: Your perfect writing space?

A: After going through the pandemic, it’s definitely not being home all the time. I work well in an outside environment, like a coffee shop, where there is human movement or discussion, but in the background. And a comfortable spot to sit.

Q: If you could publish anything, what would it be?

A: Right now, I’m working on [a book of] recipe poems. My brother-in-law is an incredible cook and has everyone over for dinner once a week. But during the pandemic, he couldn’t. We talked about writing a cookbook, but quickly realised it wouldn’t be typical. Each recipe is a tribute to a friend or family member who attends his dinners, so different people, different types of food; each will include a narrative about the person who makes, brings or requests the food.

I like blending genres. For example, my friend and I self-published a book of illustrated poetry. Even my memoir and nonfiction include other genres.

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by Cila Warncke

Journalism’s Role in Teaching Critical Thinking

This week I’m going to share a podcast recorded last summer (on one very HOT afternoon) for Le Sallay Academy. It features a conversation between myself and the wise, incisive author/journalist/memoirist Kat Lister.

It is shared with the kind permission of Le Sallay, which facilitated and hosted the podcast as part of its Le Sallay Talks series.

Reach Kat Lister on LinkedIn or via Blake Friedmann Literary Agency

***

Here are some highlights from the conversation:

Kat Lister on navigating the media of today

It’s very hard even for those working in the industry to navigate such a fast-changing landscape, and I don’t think there is any one person who is doing it perfectly. And the way that we learn and grow, and familiarize ourselves is by having conversations like this, which have to be very open about the downfalls of social media, but also about what the positives are, and what we can gain from it.

It’s not going anywhere. None of these platforms is going anywhere. The only thing that can change is our relationship with it and that can seem quite chaotic nowadays: it can be a hard place to navigate, it can be a hard place to verify. What is news? What is fake news?

The best way to make our way through this is to think about the original source. You see a video shared a gazillion times on Twitter, and that almost immediately verifies it in your mind, but actually, that’s not the asset to look at. I often have to double-check myself, because I will be almost hitting retweet, and then I’ll be like, hang on a second, where was the video filmed, who filmed it, where was it filmed, are the details correct? Is the date right?
Contextualizing tweets or videos on TikTok or wherever you happen to find yourself, is tremendously important. We’ve all become fact-checkers in a way, and that’s an incredible responsibility not only on the content creators but also the responsibility of the readers, on the audience. As we are saying, look at things more critically, and now, more than ever that’s become quite urgent. And it’s not something any of us are doing in a perfect way, I don’t think.

Cila Warncke on teaching

Yes, these are the traditional 5 W-s: When, Where, When, Who, and Why. And this is something that as a Literature teacher I really emphasize, continually asking students: “Okay, what’s the context of this? Whether it’s an article or a short story, make sure you understand where this is coming from. There is a direct relationship between that kind of critical reading of anything and the ability to navigate the news.”

Click here to listen to the full podcast

by Cila Warncke

On Revision with Elisabeth Dahl

Welcome to ‘Between the Lines’ – interviews with teachers, writers and writing teachers on specific aspects of their craft.

In this week’s conversation, Elisabeth Dahl (no, no relation) discusses the transformative power of words, with a special focus on teaching revision.

Photo courtesy Elisabeth Dahl

‘I worry for people who don’t write’

Author, illustrator, editor, educator: Elisabeth Dahl’s writing experience spans genres and professions. The through line quickly emerges in conversation – a deftness with, and delight in, words that is as contagious as a yawn. And a knack for detail that brimfills anecdotes with life and color.

The Baltimore, Maryland native grew up near Johns Hopkins’ main campus, where she completed her undergraduate degree. She returned to the city as an adult, and lives a few miles from the hospital where she was born.

“As a child, I loved school right from the start,” she writes in her online bio. “By the time I was in ninth or tenth grade, one thing had become clear: Analyzing stories and crafting sentences lit me up in a way that history, math, and the rest did not.”

Speaking on the phone, Dahl credits this to her high school teacher Joyce Brown (with whom she still exchanges emails). “She approached us as if we were college students. When we started [James] Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, we spent 20-30 minutes talking about his decision to use ‘the artist’ instead of ‘an artist’. To think this was even a question! It would have been one thing to debate writer versus artist, but to look at the article – the versus an – was incredible. As it turns out, [Ms Brown] led us to understand it made quite a big difference.”

Understanding the big differences a small lexical choice can makes is a sine qua non for a writer-educator. “I’m a better writer because I’ve taught writing,” says Dahl, who worked for Johns Hopkins’ Center for Talented Youth for the better part of a decade. “I was still making the same mistakes emerging writers were making: the stakes weren’t high enough, or I was padding the stories. Seeing these problems [as a teacher] was sort of teaching myself at the same time. It helped me incorporate the lessons into my own writing.”

Textures of language

For Dahl, a reciprocal relationship between teaching and literature was established early; her mother and grandmother (with whom they lived until Dahl was eight) were elementary school teachers who made reading a central part of her young life. They also gifted her with a fascination for the stories embedded in artifacts and moments. Her favorite space, as a child, was her grandmother’s walk-in closet. “It smelled like mothballs but had its own, not just aroma – aura. It had a history. It was a special occasion if I got to try on old dresses, like the one my mother wore to her junior prom. There was a scarlet red [dress], like what a Spanish dancer would wear, with tiers, strapless. It didn’t look like any of the other clothes in there. Jane Eyre had her red room; I had this red dress.”

The aural and visual qualities of words beguiled her: “I liked that if you said a word like ‘fork’ or ‘salad’ 25 times to yourself, it became nonsense, weird, you could almost hallucinate about it”. Another female relative, an aunt, was a graphic designer. Tracing pages in her books on hand-lettering introduced Dahl to the “tactile aspect” of language.

These formative experiences of words and stories as real and imaginative, concrete and abstract, primed Dahl to thrill to the challenge when Ms Brown assigned Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener. “A light had turned on. I remember standing in her empty classroom, during a free period, talking about it with her, totally energized. I [still] don’t know if I know what the story means,” she says cheerfully. “But I love it. It’s like a Rorschach test.”

Inspired by Ms Brown’s example, Dahl prioritizes space for students to encounter epiphanies by “helping them get a new perspective, become a better observer, or express themselves better. As a teacher, you’re another voice in this person’s head. You have to take it seriously. You don’t know the other voices in their lives, all you can do is be respectful and help them grow.”

But why learn to write any more – aren’t there machines for that?

“Because to have a good relationship with writing is to have a good relationship with your own mind, your history, the world around you,” Dahl responds. “I worry about people who don’t write regularly. The memoir I’m working on has taught me so much about things I’ve been thinking about for 54 years. By laying out the words, revising the words, reconsidering the words, I’ve developed new attitudes towards certain moments, and people. It’s wonderful to be able to do that.”

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

On Revision

How do you create an open, accepting environment where students think beyond the binary of right/wrong?

One assignment I designed is based on Amelia Gray’s short story ‘Monument’. In it, the people of a town came to clean up a graveyard, then something changes, and they start destroying the graveyard, almost like Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’. I had students pick a character and rewrite the [third-person] story in the first person. We talked about what that changed, what opportunities it created, what it shut down.

This helped them realize that a piece of writing is many, many choices. It loosened students up. It was an act of playing around, like they might approach improv.

How do you push students beyond ‘good enough’?

Try to present revision as an opportunity. What if you wrote in a different point of view? What if you sprinkled some of these details throughout the story?

For students who are good but could be better, I call upon their sense of a challenge, their curiosity, intrigue. If a student is a tennis player, or pianist, say, I remind them how many hours they spend on the court or at the keyboard. Writing requires the same. It’s a lot of time, a lot of effort, yes.

I always tried to teach that we’re all on the same continuum. We’re writing. We’re writers. Getting started, revising, these things are always challenging.

How can students develop a feel for revision?

They need to be reading, copying out passages as a way of internalizing what good writing is. I encounter people who say, ‘I know I could write a novel’, then you ask what they are reading and they ‘don’t really read’. That’s never going to work.

How does revision differ between fiction and non-fiction?

With non-fiction you have to think about fact checking, accuracy, but the process is not all that different. You’re still asking about tone, voice, consistency, how the narrative is laid out, what is the best way to tell the story, whether you’ve grabbed the reader…

How do you approach teaching revision with different age groups?

With younger students, don’t talk down to them. With all ages, nurture their curiosity about where a piece of writing might go. Again, trying to relate writing to other endeavors, whether playing sports, or working at a grocery story. Remind people that revision isn’t just something we do in writing. We’re always revising things, always being asked to spend more time perfecting or altering, it’s part of being human.

What is a sign that the process is working?

When students say, this went a different direction, or, the character surprised me by doing this. That is exciting. It shows they are engaging on another level, not just trying to bang out the essay or the story.

​Dahl recommends:

The piece of writing that changed your life as an adult?

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel. She explores, in a graphic novel, growing up, the truths that were presented to her and the truths she had to discover later. It was fascinating, her level of honesty. I get most of my books out of the library, but I went straight to the book store and bought that one for full price.

A classic you love to teach?

‘Why I Live at the PO’ by Eudora Welty. It’s an unreliable narrator story, very subtle, hard to pull off. Every time I read it, I see new things.

A book about writing every writing student should read?

On Writing by Stephen King. Although I’m not a King fan, this book is so good, especially if students are interested in writing books and getting into publishing. It is full of good advice, very practical.

A book + film adaptation combo you love?

Ian McEwan’s Atonement – that was a great movie and a very good book.

A living writer you’d love to hang out with?

Ann Patchett. She co-owns a book store called Parnassus Books in Nashville; she has a wonderful personality, she’s smart, she’s a good writer.

Your perfect writing space?

My house, where I live and write, is suburban, there are beautiful trees but always people walking past. I like to have people around.

If you could publish anything, what would it be and why?

It would be nice if the memoir I’m writing eventually becomes a book. What got me started was realizing how much I loved reading memoir. There is something about a well-crafted, honest memoir that stands out; they are always engaging.

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by Cila Warncke

On Reading Like a Writer

This is an article I wrote several years ago, based on interviews with three brilliant, inspiring writers. It is worth revisiting.

_____________________________________________

boat

“It is impossible to become a writer without reading,” says Paul Hendrickson, writing professor at the University of Pennsylvania and award-winning author of numerous books including Hemingway’s Boat.

novel

There is a relationship between quality of reading and quality of writing. And a distinction between reading for pleasure and reading like a writer. The difference involves attitude, approach and appreciation. Michael Schmidt, poet, professor and author of The Novel: A Biography recommends reading, “with eyes wide open, full of anticipation.”

With this in mind, here are seven ways to read like a writer:

1. Compulsively

“You can’t be a writer unless you have a hunger for print,” says Nick Lezard, Guardian literary critic and author of Bitter Experience Has Taught Me. “I was the kid who sat at the table and read the side of the cereal packet.” In Nick’s case, the lust for literature paved the way for a career as a book reviewer. But regardless of the genre or field to which you aspire, all writers are readers first.  And “it doesn’t matter whether the medium is the side of the cereal packet or a screen,” Nick says.

bitter

2. Slowly

Cereal-packet readers tend to wolf words like they do breakfast. This is a trait writers should train themselves out of – at least sometimes. Paul defines reading like a writer as slow reading: dawdling on the page, delving, soaking in the style and rhythm. Don’t read everything this way, though. “I don’t read the newspaper ‘like a writer’,” he notes. “I don’t have time. Nobody does.”

3. Broadly

farewell-arms

Time is of the essence for the reading writer, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore everything apart from the classics. There are, to borrow Orwell’s term, good bad books. Nick mentions Ian Fleming as an example of compelling though less-than-literary fiction. Paul gives a nod to Raymond Chandler, saying writers can learn from his “hardboiled, imagistic lines.”

4. Selectively

That said, don’t make the mistake of reading widely but not too well. “Reading crap is no good for the eye or ear,” says Michael. “Read only the best, and read it attentively. See how it relates to the world it depicts, or grows out of.”

Nick, who has read his share of bad books as a reviewer, concurs: “If you just read books like 50 Shades of Grey or Dan Brown, you’re going to wind up spewing out a string of miserable clichés.”

 5. Attentively

stein

You get the most out of good writing by reading it with real attention. Michael advises writers to pay heed to metaphor, characters’ voices, how the author develops those voices and how they change. He recommends Christina Stead’s The Man Who Loved Children as a rewarding subject of attentive reading: “There is a strong sense of development, nothing static there. I can think of no better pattern book for a would-be writer.”    

6. Fearlessly

ulysses

Reading like a writer means going out of your comfort zone. When Nick was in his teens he tackled James Joyce’s Ulysses. “It was a struggle,” he recalls. “It took me a year or two. But that’s how you [learn] – you find stuff that’s above your level.”

7. Imaginatively

Reading above your level is valuable, in part, because it challenges your imagination. Paul talks about savoring the terse beauty of poetry and imagining “everything that’s between the spaces of the words, the spaces of the lines.” By observing the work of your own imagination you gain insight into how writers evoke images and emotions.

You don’t have to read every book (or cereal box) like a writer. But the more you immerse yourself in words and cultivate these seven skills, the better your writing will be. “If you are writing a potboiler, imagine how wonderful it will be if the work you produce is actually a proper novel,” says Michael. “Read the best, and read the best in your elected genre.”

lighthouse

Writers’ Recommended Reading:

Ulysses – James Joyce
To The Lighthouse –Virginia Woolf
A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway 
Three Lives – Gertrude Stein
New York Review of Books

by Cila Warncke

On Ungrading with Anthony Lince

This is the debut post of ‘Between the Lines’ – interviews with teachers, writers and writing teachers on specific aspects of their craft.

This week’s interview is with Anthony Lince, per his online bio ‘a Latinx educator and scholar who teaches first-year writing courses at UC San Diego and local community colleges.’

Photo courtesy Anthony Lince

Writing: From ‘terrified’ to teacher

In conversation, Lince has a ready beam and belies several notions of what a scholar of writing looks like. Figuratively, anyway. The dun-colored, round-neck sweater is classic English teacher chic, but he is quick to undercut the notion that he is a born wordsmith.

Growing up, San Diego, California Lince was happiest on the basketball court, running plays as a point guard through his high school years.

‘I was terrified of writing,’ he confesses, still smiling. ‘I loved to read, but as far as writing went, I never felt confident.’

Writing at all, much less teaching writing was so far out of mind as to be out of sight. After high school, Lince joined the Army and served as a military police officer. When he enrolled in college, aged 25, he planned to study criminal justice.

So where did writing come in?

‘Professor Bustos, who taught my first-year writing course. There were texts by Mexican-American writers like Pat Mora and Sandra Cisneros, which I connected with as a Mexican-American. And the Professor let me know he enjoyed my work.’

Despite struggling with imposter syndrome at the unexpected praise, Lince trusted his teacher enough to take a job at the writing center, at Bustos’ recommendation. There, he discovered he liked helping peers. His confidence in his own writing grew; he became an English major.

Lince didn’t set aside his thirst for justice, though: ‘As I started to get an education in the humanities, I saw a lot of injustices that needed work.’

Towards more equitable education

Lince is passionate about opening doors. One of the reasons he practices ungrading is to ‘create a positive, less-anxious, equitable, and antiracist learning environment’ (more on all that in a moment).

Lince was the first in his family to complete college. He understands the challenges and subtle (or blatant) inequities that non-traditional students, or those from marginalized communities, face. ‘It was unfamiliar terrain,’ he recalls of undergraduate study. ‘Take office hours – I had no idea you could go talk to professors. Things like figuring out a financial aid are hard if you don’t know anyone who’s done it before.’

After finishing his BA in English with an emphasis on Teaching, Lince qualified as a teacher and spent a year working in a high school before completing an MA in English with an emphasis on Rhetoric and Writing Studies. He graduated in 2022 with a thesis on labor-based grading.

Though peer-reviewed articles and conference proceedings sprout like kudzu on Lince’s academic CV, his primary goal is to lead by example. ‘I try teach from the perspective of authentic writing practices and share with students from the point of authorial expertise. If someone were a dance teacher, you’d expect them to be a dancer, right? So when I go into a classroom, I let them know I write academic articles, book chapters, blog posts, that I’m working on a book. By bringing this into the classroom, they see how writing works outside the classroom.’

Though he doesn’t use the word, Lince’s teaching practice is grounded in respect. Addressing students as fellow-practitioners of the craft is mark of respect. Seeking to ‘be equitable in my assessment and grading practices so students know they are having a fair education,’ is another mark of respect.

‘I want students to see that they are important. That they matter,’ he says. ‘I want them to be confident at writing. And to be able to spot potential injustices or biases that play out in writing.’

On Ungrading

  1. What is ‘ungrading’?

Moving away from traditional numbers and letters and moving towards authentic ways of assessment. Take my own experiences as reference points; when I write for publication, or even for fun, I don’t receive numbers or letter grades, assessment happens through feedback.

  1. Your Master’s thesis is on ‘labor-based grading’ – what is that?

There are a lot of sections under the umbrella of ungrading, one of which is labor-based grading. This method only uses a student’s labor to calculate their final course grade.

At the start of the course, students sign up for the grade they want. I tell them, you want a B, you need to do these things. If you want an A, you have to do all the B labor, plus more, to get the A.

All the activities [they complete] are based on the writing process: peer review, conferencing, visiting the writing center, drafting, revision. Students can complete more elements, or go more in depth, to get a higher grade.

  1. How did you become interested in ungrading?

When I taught high school, students were primarily focused the grade. I’d give feedback and they would just ask for a grade. During my Master’s, when I was teaching first-year students, I didn’t want them to be so focused on grades so started looking for an alternative. I was the first at San Diego State to implement ungrading, but it’s started to spread. It was great to see students come to conferences and listen to feedback, not just ask for a grade.

  1. Which student demographics does this technique best suit?

If the conditions are right, it could work for high school students. College [university], for sure.

Photo by Unseen Studio on Unsplash
  1. How do students respond to ungrading?

Sometimes there is confusion in terms of not seeing a grade, they’ll ask ‘how do I know how I’m really doing?’

But most students don’t like grades, so we discuss it. They start to see how this can work for them. And I check in throughout the term to see how they’re doing.

  1. How does ungrading promote an antiracist environment?

Biases can enter into grading practices and, even if unconscious, negatively impact students. A study was done of two students in 2nd grade, one called Johnny and the other Malik. Their papers were given to various teachers and Malik’s paper was consistently marked lower. The twist was the papers were identical; the only difference was the name.

If this happens in second grade, third, fifth, high school and into college it can negatively impact that student. With labor-based grading, that sort of judgement goes away because if the student does the work, they get the credit. The classroom becomes a space where students don’t have to worry about biases or subjectivities.

  1. What other benefits do you see in the classroom?

The hierarchy of A student/C student breaks down, it becomes a place of collaboration. When students ask for feedback, they’ll ask about specific parts of the writing, which is a very different conversation from talking about a grade.

  1. How do students get a grade for their GPA?

They get a letter grade at the end of the semester, per college rules. If someone signs up for a B, I’m checking throughout the term to see if they complete the agreed work. If they do, they get the grade they signed up for.

​Lince recommends

  1. The piece of writing that changed your life before age 18?

The Fellowship of the Ring. I read it when I was nine and was so taken by the way the world was created, the multitude of characters, the important quest. It ignited my love of reading.

  1. The piece of writing that changed your life as an adult?

Anne Lamott on first drafts [in Bird by Bird: Some Notes on Writing and Life]. It let me know that all writers struggle, and that struggle is perfectly normal. I assign it to my students to show that they aren’t alone.

  1. A classic you love to teach?

George Orwell’s 1984. I teach a unit on surveillance and I like showing students this idea of a surveillance state.

  1. A contemporary work you love to teach?

I bring poetry into my classes, just to share. Shel Silverstein has some fantastic poems that are applicable to the writing classroom. Also, Percival Everett [a novelist The New Yorker describes as having ‘one of the best poker faces in contemporary American literature’]. He just won the PEN/Jean Stein Award for Doctor No, a satire on the James Bond trope.

  1. A book about writing every writing student should read?

Writing With Style by John R Trimble. It isn’t really well-known but he writes in a conversational tone students can relate to it.

  1. A book + film adaptation combo you love?

Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy was phenomenal. It was true to the essence of the books.

  1. A living writer you’d love to hang out with?

Percival Everett. I’d love to pick his brain, get a sense of his process and writing style. It also seems, from interviews, we have somewhat similar personalities.

  1. A writing tool?

Scrivener. It takes everything away from the screen so you’re only focused on the text. With so many distractions, its cool to have everything fade in the background.

Looking forward

Lince is at work on his first book, a writing guide tentative titled Questions to Ask for Becoming a Better Writer. Look for it in autumn 2024.

Connect

by Cila Warncke

On Animal Welfare Education

Photo by Matt Seymour on Unsplash

Last November, I read about New Zealand children being taught to trap and kill rats. The story has nagged me ever since.

The child killers were ostensibly working towards the laudable goal of protecting native fauna.

What I have a hard time with is the gleeful tone of the kids, and adults, involved (quoted by McClure, 2022):

  • “My trap, basically the whole thing’s a layer of blood,” grins one enthusiastic vermin-slayer.”
  • “Even the five-year-olds are really into the idea. They know the end goal: they want kiwis back in their back yards,” said Emma Jenkinson, chair of the school’s board of trustees, who helped organise the competition.”

Do the five-year-olds really want kiwis back in their yards? Or are they learning a dangerous lesson?

Teaching cruelty

Research beginning in the 1960s has found consistent strong links between childhood animal cruelty and adult interpersonal violence (Holoyda & Newman, 2016; Glayzer, et al., 2002).

This is so well-established, Holoyda and Newman (2016) note, that: “Cruelty to animals entered the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in the revised third edition (American Psychiatric Association, 1987) as a criterion for conduct disorder, the childhood precursor to antisocial personality disorder.”

But it’s rats, you may say. Vermin.

Rats — like it or not — are living creatures capable of feeling pain.

In April, 2023 New Zealand was prepared to offer children under 14 cash prizes for killing ‘feral’ cats. Fortunately there was enough public outcry to force the organizers to rescind the reward.

My point is, the category of vermin is dangerously prone to expansion.

It is a hallmark of genocide that perpetrators classify the objects of their violence as pestilential, invasive, repulsive.

“In the apocalyptic Nazi vision, these putative enemies of civilization [Jews] were represented as parasitic organisms — as leeches, lice, bacteria, or vectors of contagion,” writes David Livingston Smith, author of Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave and Exterminate Others. He also notes that during the genocide in Rawanda Hutus referred to their Tutsi victims as “cockroaches.”

To be clear, I am NOT equating killing rats or cats with killing humans. That would be absurd and offensive.

What I AM arguing is that humans can be conditioned to treat other living creatures with regard, or the opposite, and that training children to delight in the death and suffering of any living being paves the way for insensitivity to other living beings.

If we teach kids it’s okay to torment and kill one animal, what’s to stop the category of vermin expanding? Again, numerous studies across more than half a century have found strong correlations between childhood animal cruelty and adult violence.

Taking responsibility

Another problematic fact of the New Zealand slaughter campaigns (at least as reported) is the lack of acknowledgement of how the problem started.

Neither cats nor rats are native to New Zealand, and they didn’t swim there. Humans brought rats to the islands (Innes, et al., 1995), and doubtless brought cats to kill the rats, in nursery rhyme fashion.

Photo by Jinen Shah on Unsplash

If anyone is to blame for endangering native fauna, it is the colonizers and invaders who arrived with these animals. It may be necessary and appropriate to take protective measures now, but any engagement children have with the issue should be framed in terms of human responsibility for the initial problem.

This means that adults need to deal with the situation instead of outsourcing killing to children. If culling seems the only way to protect endangered native species it should be done as humanely as possible by trained adult professionals.

Animal welfare education

Schools can, and should, educate children about animal welfare. At this point in human history, it is less about kindness than about a last-gasp chance to save ourselves from self-inflicted environmental meltdown.

We cannot slow the headlong rush to planet-scale destruction by continuing with the same mindset that got us into it — the mindset that says: when an animal (or plant, or person) inconveniences us, let’s call them a pest and kill them.

Educating children to treat other living beings and ecosystems with respect and consideration is a step towards self-preservation, in the immediate and (if we’re lucky) long term.

Immediate impacts include reducing interpersonal violence. Scheib, Roeper and Hametter (2010) found that children who taught about animal welfare, “acquire social competences such as empathy, consideration, and responsibilities. Thus, Animal Welfare Education plays an important role in preventing violence in schools.”

Tarazona, Ceballos and Broom (2020) argue for far-reaching benefits to animal welfare education, writing: “The basic concepts of biology, welfare, and health are the same for humans and all other animals. Human actions have wide consequences and we need to change the way we interact with other living beings. … Animal welfare should always be considered in our relationships with animals, not only for direct impacts, e.g., manipulations, but also for indirect effects, e.g., on the environment, disease spread, natural resource availability, culture, and society.”

Interdisciplinary connections

To avoid this outcome, teachers in all disciplines need to participate.

As long as environmental or animal-related topics are confined to science classes, they will remain easy for students to compartmentalize. And a thing that can be compartmentalized can be ignored most of the time.

What can I do, as an English teacher?

For starters, I can highlight relevant themes in texts. One of my classes just finished reading Doris Lessing’s striking debut novel The Grass is Singing, a book in which the physical environment plays an outsized role in the social, emotional and psychological environment. It explicitly deals with themes like land exploitation, too, and highlighting them initiated a thoughtful discussion.

I also love to draw from authors like Henry David Thoreau, Charles Darwin and Margaret Mead.

History class is another fantastic place to educate students about the environment. We should consider and highlight the impact of social change, war, technology, etc. on animals and the wider environment.

Math teachers can use problems that engage with the natural world, ranging from population expansion to epidemiology.

Children who don’t understand that all life is fundamentally connected will grow into adults who won’t see how their actions and choices affect their environment. They will be, in a profound sense, irresponsible. And it will be our fault for not having taught them better.

What is your view on animal welfare education? Have could it best be integrated into curricula? Share your thoughts in the comments or Tweet @CilaWarncke

by Cila Warncke

My Life in Music

Photo by Hennie Stander on Unsplash

As mentioned in a previous post, I have written for online indie zine Pennyblackmusic for the better part of a couple of decades. One of my recent projects was a series of interviews about my fellow writers, which concluded with one of my fellow writers interviewing me. As my editor, John Clarkson, put it:

“For the last two years in her ‘A Life in Music’ column Cila Warncke has talked to several of our writers and photographers about how music has affected and influenced them. We were interested in finding out in ‘A Life in Music’ what ignited a bunch of obsessives’ passion for music, and discovered that much of our team had lead lives that were just as fascinating as many of the bands. Now that column is coming to an end, and in the last in the series we have turned the tables on Cila and Nick Dent-Robinson has spoken to her about her ‘Life in Music’.”

This may well be the first time I’ve been interviewed in print so thought I’d share.

Cila Warncke: A Life in Music by Nick Dent-Robinson

Cila Warncke is one of the earliest contributors to Penny Black Music magazine, having started writing for them more than two decades ago. Penny Black founder and editor John Clarkson recalls that Cila’s first interview for the magazine was with Cinerama about their “Disco Volante” album. She was the magazine’s first female writer and, as John Clarkson says, he is proud that Cila paved the way for many more excellent female music writers in Penny Black Music over the coming years – as rock music writing was notorious for being too much of a “boys’ club”.

As a professional journalist, Cila says she was attracted by the scope for originality and independence (and lack of male chauvinism) at PBM – and she has produced a fascinating range of articles over her time there. Although she left Penny Black Music in the early 2000s and worked on the glossy London-based music magazine, ‘Q” she was welcomed back in 2012 and has been a regular contributor since then. She has written about the impact of the pandemic on those working behind the scenes in the world of live music, about the eventual demise of ‘Q’ magazine and she wrote a very thoughtful piece about Marilyn Manson. Plus she has produced excellent articles on so many other diverse topics.

Cila also originated the ‘A Life In Music’ series where she probed fellow contributors to PBM about their musical tastes, background and aspirations. – All done with great tact, sensitivity and diplomacy plus insight – key hallmarks of Cila’s style. That series is now drawing towards its conclusion – but not before we turn the tables and seize the opportunity to ask Cila about her own ‘Life In Music”’

Born in 1980 and raised in a small town in Oregon over on the West side of the USA, in her late teens Cila moved to the East Coast to study English at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia – an esteemed Ivy League institution. Subsequently she moved to London to undertake further studies at King’s College before becoming a journalist. She thrived in the UK, enjoying all the many cultural opportunities available just after the turn of the millennium as well as the proximity to Europe. She and her fellow-American husband Chris Hall, a production audio technician in the world of live music, have travelled widely and have now made their permanent base in Valencia, Spain. Cila was at her home in Valencia when I started to ask about her ‘Life in Music’.

What are some of her earliest musical memories?

“Well, my parents weren’t musicians and because my mother was an Evangelical Christian, anything that wasn’t a hymn or soft God-rock was not too popular. It was a cool, rebellious thing to listen to anything other than that. My sister and I would listen to local radio, though and so I got some of the sound of late 80s/early 90s rock and pop culture through that. But my brother – who is around 6 years older than I – loved The Smiths, The Cure and some of the other British post-punk/new wave bands. I enjoyed that sound and I recall some of the record sleeves up on my brother’s wall – brilliant images which made a lasting impression.

The first (non-Christian!) record I remember buying when I was 13 or 14 was Sting’s “Fields of Gold…Best of: 1984-94” and my sister (who was 8 years older and much cooler, always) bought me Green Day’s ‘Dookie’ – which I still think is a great record!”

Read the rest of the interview at Pennyblackmusic.co.uk

by Cila Warncke

10 Sex Affirmative Books for English Language Arts

Following on from my previous post on the importance of affirmative sex education, here are 10 books English Language Arts teachers can reach for to open conversations about love, relationships, gender and sexuality.

These works were chosen because they treat sex with the openness, thoughtfulness, honesty and sensitivity it merits.

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

This brief, moving book touches an many aspects of life: education, self-discovery, solitude, family relationships, etc. but Rilke’s comments about love and sex shine. Don’t be satisfied with conventional definitions of what a relationship ‘should’ look like, he advises. Instead, seek to develop yourself as an individual so you can truly respect and cherish the individuality of another person. It is humane, wise, timely wisdom framed in sublime prose.

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Frankly In Love by David Yoon

This YA novel centers on Frank Li, the teenage son of Korean immigrants, who finds himself trying to navigate the challenges of new love while wrestling with contradictory cultural expectations. Fast, good-humored and, well, frank, it highlights the importance of being honest with oneself and others — in life and in love.

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Cool for the Summer by Dahlia Adler

With a nod to Demi Lovato, this novel explores how issues of class and privilege complicate the already complicated issues of love and sexual identity. Are Lara and Jasmine really falling in love, or are they just cool for the summer? And what happens if Lara chases the hunky Chase…? A touch frothy, but heartfelt and affirmative of love, wherever one finds it.

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Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison

This Bildungsroman set in a well-to-do Pacific Northwest community hit home with me (though the community I grew up in wasn’t quite so well-to-do). In addition to being a welcome, thoughtful discussion of class, poverty and family tension, it has a romantic twist that is sure to get students talking.

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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Smith’s beloved coming-of-age tale set in early 20th century Brooklyn is refreshingly forthright about sex. It handles both positive and negative aspects of love and sexuality (including an attempted sexual assault) with a calm directness that can set the tone for open, non-judgmental classroom conversations.

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Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

Baldwin is perhaps my favorite writer on sex; certainly, the rare (American) author who understands and treats sex as the physical act of love. This short novel is appropriate for older teenagers, say 16-18, and explores the tragic consequences of prioritising social conventions over human relationships. To paraphrase Baldwin, the protagonist’s problem isn’t his homosexuality, it’s that his capacity for love has been crippled by his anxiety about what people might think.

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Genderqueer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe

Contemporary writers are creating a robust canon of books about gender identity and nonconformity. I love this graphic memoir for its matter-of-fact tone and authenticity. It highlights that gender identity is fluid and finding one’s path isn’t necessarily a linear journey — nor does it need to be.

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Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return by Marjane Satrapi

Lest you get the wrong impression about the back-to-back graphic memoir recommendations, let me quote one of my students when asked if he liked graphic texts: ‘No!’

He and I share the view that other people’s pictures get in the way of the (superior) moving pictures in our heads.

That notwithstanding, Persepolis 2 is an evocative, eye-level portrait of Satrapi’s struggles with language, culture, love and sexuality after she moved from Iran to Germany. This is a particularly strong choice for children who have immigrated or come from a cultural/familial context that distinguishes them from their classmates.

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Zenobia July by Lisa Bunker

For younger readers, this is a charming, uplifting novel about a trans girl coming into her own. Details like Zenobia stressing out about which restroom to use add verisimilitude and the plot touches on vital issues like deadnaming, cyberbullying and the importance of community without ever feeling preachy.

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When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities by Chen Chen

Sometimes, I read a book and think, wow, that was brilliant.

Sometimes, I read a book and think, wow, that was brilliant and I really want to be friends with the author.

When I Grow Up… is in the latter category. His poems about growing up as the child of immigrants, cultural tension, sexual identity, homophobia and the search for love are surpassingly deft, raw, funny, tragic, playful and defiant. They also communicate (don’t ask me how) a deep, fundamental good-personness. In a perfect parallel universe, Chen and I would go for drinks.

Get it here

What texts would you add to a literary discussion of love, gender and sexuality? Share in the comments or Tweet @CilaWarncke

by Cila Warncke

Let’s Talk About Sex Education

Photo by Gaelle Marcel on Unsplash

Last year, for the first time, I taught about gender and sexuality in literature. My kneejerk reaction was, I can’t talk about sex to teenagers. Arrggh!

On reflection, this reaction had everything to do with my hangups (to use a good old-fashioned word) and nothing to do with my students’ needs.

This is a common problem in sex education, with the current brouhaha in the United Kingdom serving as an example.

British prime minister Rishi Sunak has, according to the Guardian, “asked the Department for Education to “ensure schools are not teaching inappropriate or contested content” in the subject of relationships, sex and health education… Sunak confirmed the review… after a Tory MP, Miriam Cates, said children were being exposed to sex education classes that were “age-inappropriate, extreme, sexualising and inaccurate”.”

Numerous Tory MPs are on board, one of their complaints being that young people are being taught about oral sex — a classic case of adult prudishness being prioritized over teen well-being.

Chambers et al. (2004) is quoted by Leung et al., 2019 saying Britain’s “value-led approach [to sex education] merely reflects the interests and principles of stakeholders, while overlooking the actual needs and wellbeing of youths.”

Sex ed in the internet age

Does anyone with two brain cells to rub together think not discussing oral sex, or any other sexual act, proclivity or topic, is going to prevent kids from knowing what it is, discussing it, watching it and even doing it?

Children are handed internet-connected screen devices almost as soon as their chubby baby fingers can hold them, in many cases.

Statista data show that 58% of British children own a smartphone by age 8; by age 12, that jumps to 93%. You can bet the farm they aren’t just using it to watch Sesame Street.

Sexuality isn’t a switch that flips at puberty. Sexual behaviors and curiosity are apparent in early childhood.

This might make grown-ups uncomfortable, but our discomfort isn’t useful. Parents and teachers have a duty to help kids navigate this vital part of life.

If we don’t step up, the internet will.

Student needs versus teacher discomfort

In an op-ed, 25-year-old journalist and editor Sasha Mistlan writes (re: Andrew Tate and the importance of proactive sex education): “My friends and I didn’t get any proper education about sex, consent or relationships until we were 13, by which time we had learned it all from internet porn and lads’ mags.”

How can educators ignore this need?

I am a literature teacher; the biology of the birds and bees are beyond my remit. But it isn’t the birds and bees that students need to know about.

They need models of relationships and ways of relating that affirm sexuality as an important (but not overwhelming), natural part of adult life, and of sex as a source of joy and connection. They need love stories with happy endings. They need, also, stories that are unhappy or ambiguous; stories that show mistakes and heartbreaks as a navigable part of human sexual experience, not reasons to drink poison.

However awkward I may feel, students need a safe space for curiosity and discussion. Because lord only knows, they are talking about sex outside the classroom.

Sex positive education

Does the phrase ‘sex positive education’ make you a little uncomfortable?

It does me.

But what does the alternative imply? Sex negative education doesn’t prevent young people from having sex.

Data from the worryingly puritanical United States show that even students who promise to abstain from premarital sex… don’t.

Research published by the American Academy of Pediatrics peer-reviewed journal Pediatrics found: “Five years after the pledge [to abstain from sex], 82% of pledgers denied having ever pledged. Pledgers and matched nonpledgers did not differ in premarital sex, sexually transmitted diseases, and anal and oral sex variables. Pledgers… did not differ in lifetime sexual partners and age of first sex. Fewer pledgers than matched nonpledgers used birth control and condoms.”

Scaring teenagers away from sex has never worked; ignoring sex in the hope teenagers won’t notice it is ludicrous.

The best, bravest, least-comfortable option is to say: hey, sex is a huge part of life, however whenever wherever and with whomever you do it (or don’t), and it can be one of the most joyous parts of life, or one of the most damaging. Let’s talk about how to make it joyful, empowering, pleasurable, safe and beautiful.

Affirmative literature

As a literature teacher, I can do my part by teaching texts that articulate the delights and challenges of sexuality and sexual identity, and working with my colleagues in health, science and psychology to create a safe, affirmative atmosphere for conversations about love, sex and gender.

This requires making careful choices about what my students read. Many of the canonical ‘love stories’ of European literature are anything but — think Wuthering Heights or Romeo and Juliet where ‘love’ and violence are inextricably mixed.

The search for affirmative literature requires looking beyond the cano and seeking stories that reflect a variety of experiences, cultures, orientations and gender identities.

Next week, I’ll share a list of powerful literature that treats sex with the openness, thoughtfulness, honesty and sensitivity it merits.

Suggest your favorite teen-appropriate, sex-affirmative story, poem or film in the comments or Tweet @CilaWarncke

by Cila Warncke

10 Books About People and Movement

Photo by Andrew Stutesman on Unsplash

My students and I are about to start a unit studying people and movement. Every new course and group is a fresh challenge in curriculum development: identifying and sourcing appropriate texts, deciding on writing exercises, linking new material to previous learning.

People and movement is a tough remit for its sheer breadth. From the wanderings that brought homo sapiens from its ancestral home in Africa to the current heartbreak and chaos that reign at ultra-militarized human-made borders, there is much to absorb, understand, reflect on and debate.

And of course, movement is more than just physical displacement. People and movement must consider emotional and spiritual journeys, economic trajectories, the currents that flow between lovers or haters, the passage from ignorance to enlightenment. Movement is life: heart blood nerve impulse digestive contraction sperm meets egg infant traverses birth canal. We only stop moving when we’re dead.

Looking back at my reading list of the past few months, almost every book could be profitably analyzed through the lens of movement. The following 10 books — a mix of fiction, memoir, verse and biography — give particular insight into human dynamics, visible and invisible. Without further ado, the people and movement reading list.

Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class edited by Michelle Tea

As culture gets less equal, movement between social classes becomes as fetishized as it is remote. An antidote to the reams written about the poor — Without A Net, edited by Michelle Tea — is by the poor, or the formerly poor. Though one of the key features of the essays in this book is the disabuse of the notion that someone can transcend deprivation simply by making a bit of money. Lack (of cash, of security, of stability, of self-confidence) is a persistent challenge and the writers in this anthology challenge the notion that there is a quick fix for what Richard Sennett memorably termed ‘the hidden injuries of class’.

Get it here

A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid

Brief yet lacerating, Kincaid’s dissection of colonialism ancient and modern demands an analysis of the privilege of movement. People of certain countries, cultures and backgrounds can move freely, either as conquerors or (almost as problematically) consumers of less-privileged places. The use of the second-person pushes the reader to question their identification and position in the hierarchy of movement.

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The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones

This anthology includes the longform pieces written as part of the New York Times 1619 Project, plus new essays. It examines the way catastrophic, criminal displacements of people underlie and shape United States’ culture. Kidnapping, transporting and enslaving Africans plus genocidal clearances of Native peoples created a nation that has yet to come to terms with the implications and outcomes of its past.

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Elusive: How Peter Higgs Solved the Mystery of Mass by Frank Close

Some people look outwards to understand the world, but the movement towards greater understanding often requires turning in. In the case of Peter Higgs and scores of scientists across decades, the journey was ever-deeper into the realm of subatomic particles, resulting in the eventual discovery of the Higgs boson — a particle whose movement is fundamental to the shape of our universe.

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Lowborn: Growing Up, Getting Away and Returning to Britain’s Poorest Towns by Kerry Hudson

Another intense exploration of the potential and limitations of moving between social classes. Hudson was the English equivalent of poor white trash, a circumstance which meant she spent her childhood moving from one precarious, uncomfortable, humiliating physical and social environment to another. Revisiting old haunts as a successful adult, she is confronted by how little some things have moved on.

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All the Broken Pieces by Ann E. Burg

This novel in verse is aimed at middle-grade readers but it made me weep. Told in the first-person by a Vietnamese boy who was adopted, after the war, by a couple from the United States, it gets to broken heart of violent displacement and alienation from home and culture. It also (ambitiously, deftly) addresses the emotional and physical trauma of returning veterans.

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Gravel Heart by Abdulrazak Gurnah

Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gurnah is always writing about movement; his characters roam, seek, sometimes return, are rarely satisfied. This richly textured story follows a seemingly successful immigrant who cannot outrun the pain of a mysterious childhood separation or the complexities of a family where movement failed to heal deep fissures.

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Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell

From scuttling frantically through the subterranean corridors of a posh Paris hotel to tramping the dusty byways of the Home Counties in search of a place to sleep and a spare meal, Orwell’s foray into poverty is marked by movement. Though distinct from his working-class counterparts by education, the young writer genuinely struggled, which — although he couldn’t help but see himself as in the world but not of it — still stands as an honest and compassionate account of poverty.

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The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Sharak

This novel was recommended by Nobel Prize-winning author Wole Soyinka, who praised its intensity and clarity. The story of lives split and twisted by tribal violence on Cyprus, it explores the penalties of flight, what it means to be rooted, and the long arc of coming to terms with the things that cannot be eluded.

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The Wonderful Adventure of Nils by Selma Lagerlof

For a final Nobel Prize name drop, this slightly surreal and unsentimental story of Nils the goose boy who accidentally gets turned into a tiny elf. Lagerlof won the literature prize in 1909, the crowning achievement of a career that included poetry, adult fiction and this classic children’s story. Bold and vivid, the tale of Nils illustrates the critical role movement can play in self-discovery and insight. At home, Nils was cruel, spoiled and selfish; after traversing the skies with a flock of migrant geese, he comes to understand kindness and survival in a new way.

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