T.C. Boyle |
Published: November 24th, 2013
|
A Message from T.C. Boyle - prolific writer and acclaimed novelist of such pieces as The Tortilla Curtain, World's End, and Drop City.
Boyle: Please tell your students this: I too was an English teacher. I taught at Drum Hill Junior High in Peekskill, New York, where I was born, and then at Lakeland High School in Shrub Oak, where I had attended high school myself. During this time--a period of four years—I began to write short stories and was lucky enough to get one accepted for publication, at which point I applied to grad school in fiction writing and was accepted at the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop. I finished my M.F.A. and Ph.D. there and have been teaching at USC, in Los Angeles, ever since. So what I’m saying is this: keep after it. Read, write, enjoy life and rise up the food chain till you gobble all before you. Just like me. Emerick-Brown: What advice would you have for those students? Boyle: Find a writer they love and read that writer over and over and over. |