November 2006

Leaving Atlanta, Arriving at GW

Author Tayari Jones Is the 2006 Jenny McKean Moore
Writer in Residence

Author Tayari Jones joined GW this semester as the Jenny McKean Moore Writer in Residence.

By Zak M. Salih

Every Tuesday evening, letter carriers, professional activists, recent graduates, and senior citizens from across Washington, D.C., meet in GW’s Rome Hall to share their writing with one another. Their leader, author Tayari Jones, is the University’s current Jenny McKean Moore Writer in Residence.

Since 1976, the Jenny McKean Moore Program, sponsored by the Jenny McKean Moore Fund in honor of the late playwriting student and administered by the English Department, has appointed a writer each year to teach both a workshop for GW students and a free workshop for the community.

“We look for excellence in writing and evidence of great teaching ability,” says David McAleavey, professor of English. “We also seek people who have already demonstrated involvement with their community.” Previous Jenny McKean Moore Writers in Residence include acclaimed poets Amiri Baraka and Anne Caston and novelist Julia Alvarez.

Selected from a pool of some 150 writers, Jones impressed the department with her two novels, the award-winning Leaving Atlanta and The Untelling, and with her captivating teaching style.

“Student response to her [trial] class was extremely positive,” says Faye Moskowitz, professor of English. “She simply mesmerized everyone. She was so open, so honest, and so forthcoming.”

Community outreach, one of the position’s main goals, was a crucial draw for Jones. “I loved that you get to teach classes to people in the community,” she says.
The course open to the community is structured as an informal creative writing workshop in which students’ work shapes the class. The 16 classmates critique each other’s work and provide feedback in person as well as through e-mail and a blog. Jones teaches community members the same way she teaches her undergraduate advanced fiction course at GW: fostering constructive criticism and exposure to untapped creativity.

“I think that’s how you hone new writers,” she says. “What’s most important is that the students respect each other.”

Jones values the work of all budding writers. “The most important thing is to realize that you don’t know at this stage who’s going to become a professional writer or who’s going to be a good writer,” she says. “So you treat everyone as though they will go on to publish because you don’t want to discourage anyone. They may all be great.”

Currently an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Jones will become an assistant professor at the Newark
campus of Rutgers University in the fall of 2007.

Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu