Christina Askounis: Teaching Young Writers to Trust the Process

At the beginning of each semester, when Christina Askounis meets the students in her fiction and essay writing classes for the first time, she thinks they can never be as good as the students the previous semester. And twice a year, for the past 17 years, the new students prove her wrong. As she gives them their first in-class writing assignment, the excitement and hope is rekindled.

"I have a sense of them all as unopened volumes," Askounis said. "There are all these riches lying in wait that I hope to call forth during the course of the semester through writing."

Askounis, this year's recipient of the Richard K. Lublin Award, came to Duke in 1987 when an instructor at Duke who was in a writer's group with her told her that Duke was looking for someone to teach an advanced composition class. Askounis got the job and found that, not only did she like teaching, but she was good at it.

"Teaching writing is a lot of fun," she said. "That's probably one of the better-kept secrets in the academic world."

In a letter nominating Askounis for the award, Deborah Pope, chair of the committee on creative writing, wrote that Askounis teaches "courses that few faculty wanted to teach -- because they are so hard to teach, so labor-intensive, both in and outside the classroom."

Askounis acknowledges how time-consuming the work is. Planning lessons, teaching and reading and critiquing students' work takes a good 40 hours a week, leaving her little time to write fiction.

"That's a central conflict for me," she said. "A lot of people think teaching is the ideal profession for writers because you have free time, but I haven't found that to be especially true."

But because good writing matters to her, it's very gratifying to see students sharpen their writing skills and gain confidence in writing, she said.

With a background in journalism, Askounis has done different kinds of writing, including fiction. She structures her classes in workshop format, a style she learned from a writing group led by Chapel Hill novelist Laurel Goldman that she has been a part of for years.

Through the group, she has honed her critical reading and editorial skills. In Askounis' classes, students read their own work and critique that of others, and Askounis makes clear what kind of criticism is welcome and what is out of bounds.

"It's an effective way to teach writing," she said. "Students can experience what effect their words are having on other people."

The students bring a wide range of talent and skill levels to class, and Askounis takes on the challenge of turning their personal experiences into something that someone else would want to read for pleasure. She pushes them to connect their experiences with their readers and the wider world, she said. And she teaches them the craft of revision.

"In a lot of their other courses, students rarely revise anything," she said. "They get a grade and either save the paper for posterity or trash it. I make them rework it."

Her advice to others who teach writing is the same as to that of her students: Trust the process.

"It's the process of writing that teaches us so much," Askounis said. "Although it can be very frustrating at times, it is also tremendously rewarding."