My philosophy is that writing can be taught. It is a skill that can be mastered if engaged in consistently and tenaciously; if given engaging enough prompts as a springboard to ideas. I also believe in teaching writing from the inside out, to take a personal experience and contextualize it to arrive at some larger truth about the self or about some aspect of society. As such, we read widely and variously in my class, essays culled from a variety of sources and on a variety of subjects. Essays that themselves act as models of great writing. From time to time I focus a semester's work around a single theme—such as the use of oral histories or the impact of childhood memories. Often, I have students work on self-generated subjects that are of great importance to themselves. There is a lot of challenging discussion, dissection and examinations in my writing classes.
Jacqueline Bishop
Clinical Associate Professor
M.F.A. – New York University
M.A. – New York University
B.A. – Herbert H. Lehman College, City University of New York
Non-fiction Writing; Creative Writing; Oral History; Visual Arts
2009–10 UNESCO/Fulbright Fellow, Paris, France
2008–09 Fulbright Fellow, Rabat, Morocco
2000 Travel Grant, Air Jamaica
2000 Travel Grant, E.L. Doctorow
2000 Travel Grant, The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, New York University
Snapshots from Istanbul. Poems. August 31, 2009. Peepal Tree Press. Yorkshire: England.
Writers Who Paint/Painters Who Write: Three Jamaican Artists. Non-fiction. October 20, 2007. Peepal Tree Press. Yorkshire: England.
The River’s Song. Novel. April 4, 2007. Peepal Tree Press. Yorkshire: England.
Fauna. Poems. July 10, 2006. Peepal Tree Press. Yorkshire: England.
My Mother Who Is Me: Life Stories From Jamaican Women in New York. Non-fiction. June 9, 2006. Africa World Press. Trenton: New Jersey.