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Glen Retief

Glen Retief, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing

One of the most exciting things on my horizon next year is the prospect of taking SU students to my native South Africa as part of the university’s GO program. The overall purpose of the program is to immerse students in a different culture. I can think of few places more unlike SU than the traditional African seaside village where we’ll spend a week living among the people, meeting with elders, farming, fishing, and learning what makes us different and what we have in common. We’ll call upon all those life-altering sights, sounds and experiences when we dive into travel writing.  Writing is, of course, always one of the best ways for students to make sense of their experiences.

I expect to gain from the work, too, because teaching writing helps me improve as a writer. A few years ago, I was wrestling with a problem regarding coherence in a memoir at the same time I was teaching memoir writing. My students and I had a vibrant dialogue going about how useful it can be to have a heartfelt question in mind as one writes about a remembered episode. This classroom discussion led me to the question that opened up and focused my own personal narrative.

That keen focus on the craft of writing is one of the things I most enjoy about SU’s Writers Institute. This is a rigorous program, and it’s through hard work that our students discover their strengths and get help shoring up areas that need it. In all of this, students have an amazing degree of access to faculty—we really are in this together. Additionally, the Writers Institute lets SU students meet and engage in small group discussions with some of the most important memoirists, literary journalists, poets and fiction writers of our times—a wonderful opportunity for students, faculty and wider members of our community.

Connections:

• Stacy Hartman ’10 A Cape Town Adventure »
• William Paris ‘10 Learning develops writing »
• The Arts at Susquehanna Creativity abounds on campus »
• GO Programs Experience the world »