“Writing is re-writing,” author Janet Tashjian said repeatedly during her Skype visit to Boys Town on March 30, 2011, as her face and voice leaped from the 27-inch iMac screen. Speaking separately with both the boys’ and girls’ high school English classes, which had just finished reading her novels, The Gospel According to Larry and Vote for Larry, Janet Tashjian’s energy was as infectious as her writing. Mrs. Tashjian made reference to Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, Jack Gantos’ Hole in My Life and Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg as influential texts that helped her segue into a full-time writer. Excited by Passages students’ many informed questions and their writing, which she had read prior to the visit, Mrs. Tashjian held up a marble notebook similar to the type our students use to demonstrate how she still writes in longhand.
The students and Mrs. Tashjian were equally excited to welcome Jesse Eisenberg, recent Academy Award nominee and long time Passages friend, to the author visit. Mr. Eisenberg performed and recorded the audio version of the “Larry” books, and his voice has been a consistent part of the classroom lessons, modeling both the op-ed articles and creative realistic fiction found in Mrs. Tashjian’s work. -- L. A. Gabay
L.A. Gabay teaches English and is available for Skype visits.
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