Off to Paradise (i.e., Hollins University)

I leave tomorrow to spend six weeks teaching in the Graduate Program in Children's Literature and Children's Book Illustration at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. I will be entering the portals of paradise.

I've sojourned at Hollins twice before: as a writer-in-residence in the summer of 2005 and as a faculty member teaching chapter book writing in the summer of 2014. So I know exactly what to expect, which is six weeks of creative joy.

This time I'm teaching one of the three Advanced Creative Writing Tutorials, where students are working on their creative thesis projects, intensely workshopping them in class sessions as well as honing fine points of craft. I will have four students in the class - yes, four - and we'll meet twice a week, Mondays and Wednesdays from 2-5. I've been in email contact with them already to learn what project they are planning to pursue during our time together and to ascertain how I can best assist them in its pursuit. I love them already.

That's what makes the Hollins program such a paradise. Everyone is there for one reason only: love. The students want to write or illustrate children's books more than anything in the world and have waited all year to have these six enchanted weeks in which to immerse themselves in doing this. The faculty leave behind everything else in our lives - all our cares and woes - to spend six weeks teaching what we love best to people who yearn with every fiber of their being to learn it. In most university teaching, if you end class a few minutes early, no wails of lamentation are heard from the students. At Hollins, if you try to end a three-hour class five minutes before the close of the final hour, the students say, "But - we still have five minutes left! Can we just ask you a few more questions?"

The campus itself is lovely, tucked in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwestern Virginia. Each morning I walk, very early, with two dear friends past horses grazing in green pastures. Evenings are filled with stimulating talks, or long, intense, funny, heartfelt conversations.

As if this weren't enough, my closest friend in the world lives in Roanoke. She is retiring from thirty years of teaching high school theater, and her last day is . . . TODAY. So there will time for playing with Rachel, including a weekend getaway to Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, with two other beloved friends who live in Maryland.

Oh, and I'll have time to do my own writing, too. I've been preoccupied with scholarly, academic projects for the last few months, but I'll return to being my creative self at Hollins. Last time I was there I wrote an entire 15,000-word chapter book: Simon Ellis, Spelling Bee Champ. This time I have two creative projects packed in my suitcase - plus dreams of writing something utterly new of which I haven't yet a glimmer of an idea.

But one may come to me in paradise, don't you think?