Keynote Address: Sweetbriar College - September 22,2006

In the next decade, as the so-called Baby Boomers retire and-is it possible?-die, an enormous transfer of wealth, the largest in our history, will take place-largely secretly and in silence.

How reassuring it is to find a second appraisal, to my mind more sensitive and compelling than the first, in The New York Times (March 31).

In my heart, she has a special place because of some curious connections: she was at Radcliffe a few years before me, in the wretched fifties, and came out of that experience with formal training, an early marriage, and three sons.

This essay, by Steve Almond, from the March 25th edition of The New York Times, comes like a bombshell, dispelling not only my notions about why people take the writing workshops I teach, but why I often find teaching them frustrating.