October Author Visits

Students benefited from an amazing array of visiting authors today.

Children’s book author Sue Fliess spent time with C Formers to discuss her writing process and share tips with the boys. The best advice from Fleiss, who sent her first book to 30 publishing houses and got 27 rejections: “Never give up!”

Poet and memoirist Carolyn Forché, talked to Upper School Spanish and English classes about her poetry and her latest memoir What You Have Heard Is True (a 2019 National Book Award Finalist), which describes her time in El Salvador from 1978-1980, with the country on the brink of war. Forché noted: “It took me 23 years to write this book. Possibly I didn’t feel I was ready. I didn’t yet have a good perspective ... Partly it was because I was avoiding certain scenes. To write I had to relive it, see it, smell it.”

Historian, graphic novelist, and journalist Jesse Holland met with Form A students to share the history of black characters in comic books, television, and film. Holland then offered Form II a lesson on ethics in journalism. Using Clark Kent and Peter Parker as examples of “two of the least ethical journalists you’ll ever hear of,” Holland went on to cover ethical reporting and photo-taking, the difference between reporting and editorializing, the use of anonymous sources, the rise of fake news and fake social media, the challenges of the 24-hour news cycle, and today’s “mashing up of journalism and social media.” The proponents of fake news, he suggested, think “that just because we see it on social media, we’ll believe it. But I believe your generation is smarter than that.”