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 NewSchool. 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 NewSchool 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
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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 NewSchool: versatile, rich in resources of knowledge, open minded, practical, creative.She is the kind of teacher that makes the NewSchool great. And, I'd like to add, she is a gifted writer in her own right.
-Abigail Holstein
Editor, Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers
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I have taken many writing courses, butAlexandra’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 toreadings 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