"In most of my courses we look closely at published texts to absorb craft possibilities and we look closely at student works-in-progress. I emphasize reading for the consciousness of the material and what is on the page: strong and in motion. From this place we offer developmental feedback that stirs up the writer’s imagination in concrete ways. One of the best ways to learn how to develop your work is to practice helping another develop their work. I’m interested in the material in front of us and equally interested in how that material and our practice can encourage us to become more generous thinkers and creators."

Nona Caspers migrated to San Francisco from rural Minnesota and is an Associate Professor at San Francisco State University. Her recent book of stories, Heavier Than Air (University of Massachusetts Press) won the Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction and was an Editor’s Choice in the New York Times Book Review. Caspers' stories have been widely published in literary journals and anthologies; she has received an Iowa Fiction Award from the Iowa Review, a Cooper Prize from the Ontario Review, a Joseph Henry Jackson Literary Award, a Barbara Demming Memorial Award and is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant. She is the author of The Blessed and another book of nonfiction prose is forthcoming in 2008, Little Book of Days, from Spuyten Duyvil (SD) Press, NY.

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