Recommended Reading

Reflections and Readings from My Bradbury Trio Program

I taught in public schools for 26 years and have always been fascinated with writing. Julia Cameron would probably say that since my family didn’t recognize writing as a career, that I went into teaching as a shadow job.

I hardly used the official teaching materials when it came to teaching writing. I used craft books and techniques I used in my own notebooks. I wrote beside students before it was the recommended thing to do.

One of the mentor texts I always used was poetry. I would read them to the students and then we would pull a line, or have them write what it reminded them of, or use the title. Some of the most emotional work came out of these Quickwrites. Linda Reif was using this idea decades ago with her students in New England.

I used the same practice with Read Alouds in the classroom as well. I think I am going to pull out some of the most beloved books and use them with my PUSH writing group full of adults in the fall!

---

The Bradbury Trio [reading a poem, an essay, and a story every day] fuels my writing. It became an on-and-off reference for PUSH groups, usually focusing on poetry. Mini challenges dedicated to the Trio have been part of my offerings over the years. I don’t remember when I first heard about the program. I think it was a blog I stumbled upon after reading Ray Bradbury's quotes! I used one of Bradbury’s books for my essay each day. Then I moved to Natalie Goldberg.

This trio structure works for me because I am inspired to write after I read. I read what I normally might not. After reading the three texts there are hints of influence in the piece I write, but you wouldn’t be able to pinpoint the references. What certain details in a poem or a story or an essay conjures up in my brain is based on my experience and would be different for you.

I like to write with prompts. It is its own magic.

I hope the reading you do today leads you to writing that could have not been created any other way.

Here are some of the texts that made an impact on me.

Poem: The Average Mother Now Spends Twice as Many Hours on Childcare as Did Her Counterpart in 1965, and She Also Spends Three Times as Many Hours Working Outside the Home; or, How to Sing a Song of Sixpence When You’re Really Feeling Wry by Camille Dungy - The Paris Review

This poem has an enormous cumulative title. The last line was the most impactful to me, “We drove out of some sort of tunnel, everyone quiet now,
           smiling, over the yellow bridges into Pittsburgh.”

Story: “They Could Have Been Yours” Joy Baglio

An interesting story on seeing the people in your life on social media. Joy is in residency at the Kerouac house in Florida right now.

Essay: “Looking Back on My Montreal Kitchens” Heather O’Neill The Walrus

This essay is a great lens to see where a list prompt can go. In my practice, a lot of people think list prompts are throwaways of a sort. You make the list and move on. This essay shows the themes that can reoccur in our lives represented by something as mundane as a kitchen.

A little more about me: Tammy L. Evans is a writer, teacher, and coach living in a tiny house on a peninsula with her husband and adventure cat. Her location device is her loud laugh. Her poetry has been published in The Storyteller, FoxGlove Journal, Story Hall, Blue Insights, The Partnered Pen, and others. Her fiction has been published in Gone Lawn, Cabinets of Heed, Spelk, Five on the Fifth, Clover and White, Fiction Berlin Kitchen, and others.