Bards Behind Bars

In my early 20s, having received an MFA in creative writing from Brown University, I sought to cobble together a living by teaching. Although I had taught an undergraduate class as part of my fellowship, I hadn’t yet published a book, so the only such work available to me was intermittent and, often, unconventional. I spent the first summer after I graduated not working with words but performing the same kind of maintenance and handyman tasks that had helped pay for college—this time for the university from which I had just received an expensive degree. Some of the rooms I cleaned and refurbished had recently been vacated by the students I had just taught.