William John Bert

Today’s the third annual Friendsgiving, a Thanksgiving-like pre-Thanksgiving event for a bunch of people who like each other; hence, Friendsgiving. Thanksgiving’s always been my favorite holiday so I’m more than happy to celebrate it twice a year. The first two Friendsgivings took place at my house, but because in the spring I traded my room [...]

Since March, I’ve been working with DC students from several high schools, including Duke Ellington, Ballou, Wilson and Bell, in evening poetry workshops at 826DC. A bunch of us have been helping out—Mike Scalise, Adam Pelligrini, and Sally Keith (the last two being actual poets, while Mike and I, both prose writers, were faking it [...]

If I updated more regularly, I would have written entire posts about the following things. AWP 2011 came and went blazingly fast. I saw many people I’ve missed dearly, and missed many people I would’ve liked to see. The second workshop with the Bell Poetry Club for 826DC, this time diving into the poem-as-extended-metaphor, went [...]

Friday, I helped out with an 826DC workshop at Bell Multicultural High School in Columbia Heights. Bell’s Poetry Club meets after school each Friday, and we came by to work with them on metaphor. To fuel the discussion, we read “Snow Leopards at the Denver Zoo” by William Matthews (who I’d never heard of before—I’m [...]

Tuesday night was the final workshop of the three-part Caught in the Act series that I’ve been leading at 826DC. I played trombone in high school band, and I remember the teacher telling us that the most challenging pieces weren’t the flashy allegro fortissimo showpieces (however much we enjoyed them) but rather the lento piano [...]

Tuesday night was the second installment of Caught in the Act, the creative writing workshop series I’m leading at 826DC. It went really well–class size doubled (to two!) and we produced an entire new draft, this time from the point of view of the person who did the catching. My involvement with 826DC goes back [...]

I’m leading a workshop entitled Caught in the Act at 826DC tonight: Sometimes the best essays are the ones about breaking the rules. In this workshop, you’ll write essays about the times you’ve been caught doing something you shouldn’t have. We’ll talk about how to set the scene, narrate character actions and motivation, build suspense, [...]