Writers and Writing
Session II: July 16-30
COST: $3,700
AGE: RISING 7TH GRADERS AND OLDER
This Portal will focus on both academic writing and the personal writing students might do as independent authors. Through close reading of non-fiction, poetry, and short fiction, as well as daily freewriting, discussions, and revision work, we will consider writing as a series of decisions and choices that follows inspiration. Creative non-fiction and short critical prose will comprise the written work. We will work at dispelling some of the mystery of the writing process, and we will go about this work with the seriousness of children at play. This course is ideal preparation for the writing and discussion-based exploration of literature that comprises much of the humanities work at independent schools.
All reading materials will be available digitally. Students will need a physical notebook, but the majority of the writing will be done through shared virtual documents.
Lennox Debra returns to Hotchkiss after graduating in 2002. In his life post-Hotchkiss, he attended Hobart and William Smith Colleges, where he studied English literature and Modern Dance. During his time there, he focused on the works of James Joyce and Jacque Lacan. After his time at Hobart, he would spend the next five years teaching English literature and ESL at a two-year college before returning to get his Masters in English at Stony Brook University. Again focusing on Joyce for his Master's Thesis, he attended school while working as a residential counselor at a residential school for teenagers with social and developmental disorders. At that job, he met his wife Kristen. When their first daughter Lenora was born in 2015, he got his Masters from Stony Brook and also began work on his Ph.D. at Fordham University. Lennox is currently working on finishing and defending his dissertation on the legacy of the bildungsroman in British Modernism. He is excited to be teaching writing, rhetoric, and literary analysis to the students of Hotchkiss. He lives in Pawling, NY, with his wife Kristen, daughters Lenora (6) and Hannah (1) and their dog Krypto.