English Department Faculty

Publications:

The Practice of Creative Writing: A Guide for Students, 2nd Edition (2012)
The Practice of Creative Writing is designed for all students in the introductory course, including those who may never take another writing class. Its message is, simply put: you can do this, and it's worthwhile to try. Heather Sellers, who writes in multiple genres herself, has developed an approach that focuses on the habits and strategies that produce good writing in any genre. These habits and strategies make it possible for students to focus, to generate lots of writing, and to get to the good stuff -- the powerful imagery and the stories they really want to tell. She makes creative writing fun by providing opportunities to be playful and to experiment at the same time she teaches students the importance of discipline and craft.

You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know (2011) is the story of how I uncovered my past, which had long been obscured by my family’s extreme circumstamces and by face blindness, a neurological disorder that prevents me from recognizing people by face. Along the way, I discovered a deeper truth: that even in the most flawed circumstances, love may be seen and felt.

The Practice of Creative Writing: A Guide for Students (2008).
"New for the introduction to creative writing course, The Practice of Writing, by Heather Sellers, gets students writing, keeps them writing, and introduces them to life-long writer's habits. The approach is inviting and accessible and includes a unique emphasis on reading as a writer."

The Boys I Borrow (2007).
"In a world in which people speak in clichés and platitudes, Heather Sellers’ stunning new collection of poems The Boys I Borrow, transcends the quotidian events of our day. I’ve read novels that have not developed relationships between people in marriage as well as this. In poems that deftly insert lyric moments in narrative poems, she uncovers the nuances of infertility, a new marriage and the changes in life before and after all of the above. If you know anything about the difference between desire and love and the realities that blur between them, if you’ve lived any life at all you’ll 'remember, you have lived this way, always hungry' for more." -A. Van Jordan

Chapter After Chapter: Discover the Dedication And Focus You Need to Write the Book of Your Dreams (2006).
Writing a book requires a focus, a sense of knowing and trusting in yourself and your work. And it requires an unflinching commitment to staying the course. Chapter After Chapter shows you how to build on your good writing habits, accrue and recognize tiny successes, and turn your dedication to the craft into the book you always knew you could write if you could just stay with it. You'll discover how to celebrate the momentum of slow and steady, stay in love with your book project through soggy middles and long revisions, and embrace the nakedness that is creative expression.

Your Whole Life (1995, poetry chapbook).
In 1995, I was working on this collection of poems about growing up in weird, wild Florida when my teacher, Jerome Stern, discovered his brain cancer had returned. Jerry is one of the most important people in my life and his illness was painful, terrible, scary, and wrenching. Jerry was an amazing teacher. He was in his office from 7 in the morning until 6 at night. Students would sit in the hall outside his door, waiting for hours for a conference. Jerry made adulthood look interesting. He presented fiction as learning, and as a way of life. As I was writing about childhood, and Jerry was dying, I was thinking a lot about those two losses as twins. The poems in this series started to disrupt themselves and change; the collection tells two stories simultaneously: coming of age, and losing a beloved friend. --Heather Sellers