One writing teacher’s plight
A short story writer, essayist, novelist, memoirist, editor, and writing workshop leader, Paulette Bates Alden has an impressive blog and web site. Her wise essays on writing technique and aspects of memoir are stimulating and useful. Lately I’ve been enjoying her short story archives. “Enormously Valuable” is about Miriam, an adjunct writing teacher in Minneapolis at a middling state school and its branch campuses. A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford (like Alden herself), Miriam has published a well-reviewed short story …