Recommendations from Workshop Members:
Nine years ago, it was my good fortune to take Alexandra Shelley’s class, The
Great American Short Story, at the New School. The class was a portal to the world of
writing and literature, and Ms. Shelley has been my guide and mentor ever since.
Ms. Shelley’s meticulous preparation, integrating carefully chosen reading,
elements of craft, and student work, enhanced the lively and spontaneous atmosphere
in class. Her love of literature and respect for the creative process was contagious. She
took obvious pleasure in her student’s accomplishments. She facilitated a nurturing
atmosphere in which the creative spirit could thrive along side the critical eye.
Ms. Shelley encouraged her students to form a writing community. She
facilitated interaction in class, arranged public readings for her students, and organized
an after-class dinner. Indeed, enduring friendships and on-going independent writing
workshops were formed. My class was as diverse in age, gender, background, and
experience writing as a New School class can be. However, under Ms. Shelley’s
guidance, writing became the great equalizer, and we discovered just how much we all
shared. We learned that a thriving writing community was essential for our continuing
development.
While challenging students to become more thoughtful readers and teaching
them how to be constructive critics of their own work, Ms. Shelley imbued her students
with the confidence to identify themselves as writers, as well as teaching them the
brass tacks of getting published. She introduced us to the world of professional writing
by keeping us informed of lectures and readings taking place around the city. Many,
including myself, have gone on to publish in literary magazines and complete collections
of short stories. Others have gone on to MFA studies and have written novels.
Ms. Shelley has the rare gift of transforming people’s lives by recognizing and
reflecting back to them the potential waiting to be found. She is an outstanding
teacher who takes her students beyond a course of study to that place where creativity
can flourish.
-Harriet Goldman
***
I met Alexandra Shelley in the summer of 2007 as a student in her Advanced Short
Story Workshop. A colleague of mine at Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers had highly
recommended her to me. I came to her class looking for the deadlines that would get
me to my desk to write. I found an intellectual and literary opportunity that
reintroduced me to my writing—not only the habit of committing words to the page, but
also the agility of imagination, insight, and language that makes writing empowering to
both reader and writer.
Although the primary focus of the workshop was simply to write stories, I was
repeatedly impressed with the breadth of resources she brought to supplement that
work. From Henry James to Nathan Englander, she presented published works of
fiction as a casual reader, encouraging us to share what we loved; as a scholar,
unfolding the layers of meaning with us; and as a writer, asking us what we could take
away for our own work. She took the word "workshop" to heart: she taught in a way
that opened whatever was before us, be it another student's piece or a short story from
The New Yorker, as a resource for new ideas and inspiration. In this way, we began to
teach each other and ourselves.
Her enthusiasm for her teaching and her subject came though in her commitment to
treating her students as peers, evaluating each of us with the same sharp insight,
critical eye, and imagination that she turned to the exemplary published works we
unpacked in class. Being valued on the level of professional writers alone is inspiring.
She also looked at our stories with a grounded understanding of "the business." While
she had to tell us how hard it is to get published, she did it in such a way as to still
inspire hope and commitment in her students.
In in-class writing, writing short stories, and reading with Alexandra, I have improved
as a writer and as a thinker. She continues to offer help even though I have left her
classroom: examples, criticisms, insights, and exercises. I know she does the same for
other former students—as the years go by, her "class" just keeps expanding, people
keep coming back to her.
Alexandra is how I have come to know the New School: versatile, rich in resources of
knowledge, open minded, practical, creative. She is the kind of teacher that makes the
New School great. And, I'd like to add, she is a gifted writer in her own right.
-Abigail Holstein
Editor, Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers
***
I have taken many writing courses, but Alexandra’s stands out as the one that
best honed my story telling, provided a community and prepared me for an MFA
program.
When my class with Alexandra ended, she continued to review my writing and
provided support and encouragement for my MFA applications. When I needed
letters of recommendations, she obliged me two years in a row. With her
support and vote of confidence, I entered the MFA program at
Rutgers-Newark this past fall.
One reason I selected Rutgers’ program was because Alice Elliott Dark,
whose writing I first encountered in Alexandra’s class, teaches here. In
Professor Dark’s class two weeks ago, we had a lecture on landscapes and
character. I went home, pulled out Alexandra’s handout from Annie Proulx
and distributed it to classmates.
Alexandra’s interaction does not end in the class room. She creates a
writer’s community. As a Midwesterner transplant, a writing community is
something I have always wanted in New York but didn’t know how to find.
Alexandra held after-class dinners, invited us to readings that she hosted and made
us aware of literary events at The New School and other venues.
Alexandra is a working writer in New York whose insights come from
experience, and who is devoted to maintaining a community once class has ended
and the lonely, heavy lifting of writing begins.
-Aimee Rinehart