Fortune Smiles

Last Friday afternoon I was lucky enough to sit in on a writer's workshop by Lee Gutkind. He started the first creative nonfiction program at the University of Pittsburgh about 15 years ago. The circumstances that led to this are interesting. My sister is in the Master of Fine Arts program at Boise State University. She happened to stumble across a notice that the Inland Northwest Center for Writers, an extension of Eastern Washington University, was bringing Lee Gutkind in to do a workshop at the center followed by a reading at Auntie's. She called and received permission to attend and told me I should do the same. To make a long story short, last Friday this humble computer geek blogger sat in a room with about 15 graduate students and listened to Mr Gutkind for almost two hours. Then the group--I sat back and soaked it all up--workshopped two essays written by two of the students in the group. It was an amazing experience for me and it gave me a whole new perspective on writing as well as analyzing what I'm reading.