Working Words: Creative Reading, Writing, and Teaching

Writing can be learned but can't be taught. What can be taught is how to read as a writer and how to use what that tells us in our own writing. By reading in this way we will put our hand on Leo Tolstoy's, Ernest Hemingway's, Flannery O'Connor's, and others' as they create in order to discover what they did to make us believe in the worlds that explode out of their pages, worlds that conjured in us the passion that brought us to our own attempt at the art of writing. Creative writing teacher and author Christopher Davis discusses the craft of the best writers in order to understand how they did their work, helps students to become good writers by finding the right way to read, and encourages good teachers to be better shepherds. Brilliant and inspirational, Working Words is a must for every student and teacher of writing. "The artistry of novelist Christopher Davis is one of the secrets of contemporary fiction."-Don Gold, Chicago Sun-Times

Christopher Davis has taught creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania and at Bryn Mawr College, where he is Senior Lecturer Emeritus in the Arts. He is the author of eleven novels and three books of nonfiction. His novel A Peep Into the 20th Century was a National Book Award nominee. He has received a Career Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He is married to Sally Warner, the author and illustrator.