The Writing Life

Celebrated author Ellen Gilchrist played many roles—writer and speaker, wife and lover, mother and grandmother. But she had never tackled the role of teacher.

Offered the opportunity to teach creative writing at the University of Arkansas, she accepted the challenge and ventured into unknown territory. In the process of teaching more than two hundred students since her first class in 2000, she found inspiration in their lives and ambitions and in the challenge of conveying to them the lesson...