Deriving inspiration from the youth and navet of undergraduate students and capitalizing on the free time that the D-Plan allows, English faculty members specializing in creative writing enjoy both the peaceful provinciality of Hanover and the intense interactions in the classroom at Dartmouth as they find time to produce their own work.
Professor Gary Lenhart, who teaches Writing 2, 3, 5 and 7 as well as English 80, Introduction to Creative Writing, finds that his writing is reinvigorated by the youthful enthusiasm of Dartmouth students.
"Working with students, who constantly remind you that you're not young but once were and that there are still young people dealing with the things that you dealt with when you were young, is inspiring," Lenhart said. "I have a theory about students, generally, which is that for many of them, they're more interesting than they will ever be again."
Since he began teaching at Dartmouth in 1996, Lenhart has published two collections of poems titled "The World in a Minute" (2010) and "Father and Son Night" (1999), two books of literary criticism focused largely on poetry called "The Stamp of Class: Essays on Poetry and Social Class" (2006) and "Another Look: Selected Prose" (2010), and "The Teachers & Writers Guide to Classic American Literature" (2001). He has recently published six separate poems that he hopes to unite with current compositions for a new collection.
Although he only joined the faculty in July, creative nonfiction professor Jeffrey Sharlet said that he also relishes teaching Dartmouth undergraduates because they are not yet locked into exhausted writing formulas.
"Undergrads oftentimes are maybe not as skilled writers [as graduate students], but they haven't learned the formulas yet," Sharlet said. "A lot of times you ask them to tell a story and they don't know how it's supposed to be told, so they don't do a pale imitation of a New Yorker story. It's completely in their own voice. They don't know what they're not supposed to say, so they say it."
Sharlet has previously worked as a reporter for Rolling Stone and Harper's Bazaar, and as a graduate professor of creative nonfiction at New York University.
Sharlet said that Dartmouth's academic calendar and the requirement that professors teach four classes a year entice professors to continue producing work. The system allows Sharlet one term to fully engage with the subjects of his creative nonfiction, which he calls "submersion journalism."
"[The quarter system] allows us to concentrate our teaching in one period and gives us a big block of writing time," Sharlet said. "Before, I taught at NYU on the semester system and I wrote a book and it was brutal. It took years of my life."
His book "C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy," published in September by Back Bay Books, explores the full extent of the power of the Fellowship an American fundamentalist organization residing on C Street in Washington, D.C., that funds worldwide efforts to convert people to what Sharlet calls "trickle-down Christianity."
Sharlet is presently writing a short book called "The Hammer Song," an investigation of the evolution of the song "If I Had a Hammer" from a radical left-wing Communist mantra to a popular chart-topper by Peter, Paul and Mary.
Fiction professor Catherine Tudish said her students challenge her to question what she believes is important in writing. As a result, she aspires to compose a textbook on fiction writing that would include the best of her students' work.
"If I'm trying to give people advice about how to be better writers, I should take it myself," she said. "People who write these textbooks tend to use prizewinning writers who are older, which I don't think is very helpful for students. I'd love to write a text that would use very good examples of student writing."
While a professor at Dartmouth, Tudish has published the short story collection "Tenney's Landing" (2005) and the novel "American Cream" (2007). She is in the midst of completing a collection of short stories centered on West Aubern, a fictional small town in Vermont.
Living in the Upper Valley has guided the setting of Tudish's new collection of short stories, she said. Her other books are set in towns in southwestern Pennsylvania, where she grew up.
"I find Vermont a really interesting place to live because there are so many social and political perspectives existing in these small communities that it's a very rich environment to work in," Tudish said. "I also think it's inspiring because of the landscape. I think of them as pocket valleys, where people live, and each one has their own particular character."
Tudish also said that she writes predominantly during terms when she's not teaching. She cited advising senior theses as an opportunity that takes up large amounts of time during her "on" terms.
"I have so little time to write when I'm teaching that usually about three to four weeks into the term, I give up on my own writing and concentrate on teaching," Tudish said.
For Lenhart, his fellow members of the creative writing faculty also have a significant impact on his work. He mentioned that poetry professor Cleopatra Mathis's blurb for his latest book of poetry revealed to him that his collection focused on art, politics and family.
"It's a small faculty and I'm friends with all of them, especially the ones that have been here for a while," he said.
Lenhart mentioned that although he used to write in large quantities while teaching at the College, he can no longer write so late into the night.
"During these last few years, I've become that old guy," he said.
