Learning to Write, Then and Now

When I first mentioned the MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program at Vermont College of Fine Arts in this blog, I said that when I was invited to teach there I was skeptical. I had learned how to write without any such program. I had come to be published without even a meaningful creative writing class or a mentor.

As a University student, I took a couple of creative writing classes, but they gave me little except an excuse to use homework time to write, which was itself a blessi...