Rachel Manley | Lesley University

I do not have a teaching philosophy. Maybe empathy. But that's not philosophy. As a mentor I try to intuit what's in the minds and hearts of the writers I work with, hoping to help sharpen their philosophy, their thoughts, their words, and their meaning, so that they can achieve whatever special literary goal they have set for themselves. In the end, if I do have to define a philosophy of teaching, or the technique I use to buttress that philosophy, then simply, it is to use my experience as a writer in guiding and assisting my students along their journey to fulfill their imagination.

Work

Fiction

The Black Peacock (2017) (finalist for Amazon first novel award)
The Fellowship (2019)

Memoirs

The Applestrudel Tree (Work in Progress)
Horses in Her Hair (2008)
Slipstream: A Daughter Remembers (2009)
Drumblair: Memories of a Jamaican Childhood (2009)

Books of Poetry

A Light Left On (1992)
Poems 2 (1978)
Prisms (1970)

Awards

1997 Governor General's Award for Literature (Canada); The Jamaica Centennial Medal for Poetry, The Mary Ingraham Bunting Fellowship (Literature) Radcliffe College; Virginia Center for Creative Arts Fellowship; Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Fellowship, Bellagio, Italy; Pierre Berton Fellowship, Yukon, Canada; Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship; New York Public Library's Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers Fellowship; Hawthornden Castle, Edinburgh, Scotland Writer's Fellowship.

Education

B.A. (Special honors) The University of West Indies