Author to visit writing class

Amy Sage Webb will be on the Hutchinson Community College campus on Thursday, April 9, to work with the Introduction to Creative Writing class from 1:10-2:40 in LH 210.

Webb is the author of “Save Your Own Life,” a collection of short stories.

She the recipient of the Roe R. Cross Distinguished Professor award at Emporia State University, where she teaches English and is co-director of the Creative Writing Program there.

Other students or faculty who are interested in sitting in on Webb’s presentation on Thursday should contact Bill Sheldon at sheldonb@hutchcc.edu or at 665-3445.

Webb also will give a reading from her book that night at 7 p.m. at the Hutchinson Art Center, 405 N. Washington.

The novelist Thomas Fox Averill says of Amy’s collection: “The robust stories in Save Your Own Life are full of surprises, are clear, open and singing all through.”

Webb’s collection of short stories, set in the Flint Hills region near Emporia, Save Your Own Life, has drawn much praise for its image-conjuring descriptive characters and landscapes.

“These are stories rooted in Kansas soil, in country roads and small towns, in characters you swear you have met before, men and women who tug at your heart and get under your skin,” wrote author Sharman Apt Russell in a review of the collection.

“The landscape where they live is both familiar and exotic, deeply felt and vividly described, from a writer clearly at home in the natural world.

Save Your Own Life is a strong and satisfying collection, with language that can punch you in the solar plexus-just the right phrase, just what you have always known.”

Webb earned a Master of English from Kansas State University, and a Master of Fine Arts from Arizona State University before coming to ESU as professor of writing, literary editing and American literature.

When asked why she chose to teach, Webb countered that in reality, teaching chose her.

“My heart knew from the very beginning that this was what I was supposed to do. I just had to develop the good sense to listen to it.

“Higher education is transformative in the lives of those who experience it, both the teachers and the students. Both sides are questioning assumptions, investigating concepts, and adding to existing knowledge. This is a dynamic process. It is work that demands the most of me intellectually and as a person.”

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