I took a couple of creative writing classes with Joyce Carol Oates at Princeton University, and in my senior year there, I took a long fiction workshop with Toni Morrison. I fell in love with it.

I took acting classes in my senior year in college and I loved it.

I had never taken creative writing classes. Hadn't even considered it.

Going into senior year, I was hoping to be a state champ and I fell short?but you can't look back.

I got my GED my senior year and ended up taking community college classes before I transferred to Bard.

When I taught at the University of Houston in the Creative Writing program, we required the poets to take workshops in fiction writing, and we required the fiction writers to take workshops in poetry.