To Old Dominion University writer in-residence Philip Gerard, teaching is more than a one-way street.
It's a collaborative act, a risky but "open-minded exploration, a driving curiosity, an eagerness to be surprised and a willingness to be proven wrong," Gerard says in the introduction to his Web page.
It's that sort of free-flowing discourse that Gerard, director of professional and creative writing programs at UNC-Wilmington, will bring to a series of workshops he's leading at Old Dominion this semester for his residency.
Gerard will discuss "The Whole Truth Ð Fiction and Nonfiction" on the practical, aesthetic and ethical differences between fiction and nonfiction writing, at 10 a.m. Thursday, March 4. The session will be held in the Burgess Room of the Batten Arts and Letters Building. It is free and open to the public.
Teaching is a humble profession, according to Gerard, who says he finds success with his students most often when he sits and talks with them instead of lecturing to them.
Each semester, Gerard teaches workshops in fiction and nonfiction for novices and experienced writers. The workshops are intended to complement literature courses because they teach students how to read with precision, he said.
Gerard's published works include "Hatteras Light," "Cape Fear Rising," "Desert Kill: A Novel," and a nonfiction work, "Brilliant Passage."
Other nonfiction works include many magazine pieces and "Creative Non-Fiction: Researching and Crafting Stories of Real Life," in which Gerard described writing as a "mystical act."
Like sailing, "it requires a lot of preplanning, but once you're under sail, you stop thinking and do it by instinct," he told "PortFolio" magazine. "Writing is that way. You do all your research and planning in advance so you can relax when you sit down and do it by instinct. The exhilaration . . . comes when you're hooked in and everything is going well. It's like being on a big sleigh and you don't want it to stop."
For more information about the March 4 workshop call 683-4770.
