About John Gould's Blog

So what is a blog, anyhow?  My sense is it all depends who’s writing it.  If the writer is a squash player, like my son Sam, it’s going to be about squash.  If the writer is a police officer, it’ll probably tell whacky police stories, or argue whether Dunkin makes the best donuts.  I’m a writer and a teacher of English, so my blog will be about writing and teaching.

I’ve got three large categories for my writing, and the categories are listed below.

First, I’m posting nonfiction ESSAYS about items and events I find interesting:  memories of second grade, visiting William Faulkner’s home town, starting a diet to combat diabetes.  You get the range.

Second, I write FICTION, so there will be short stories and excerpts from my longer fictions.  I recently published a novel about a prep school (having taught at several, one of them for 26 years!).  So I’ve posted part of a chapter from EDUCATING LONGFELLOW.

Finally, there are pieces about WRITING & TEACHING.  There’s one about a young math teacher who loses a bet with his students and has to have a math function tattooed over his rib.  Also there’s a collection of remarkable short essays written by my students at Bennington College.

I try to publish about once a month, but I often come up short of that goal.  Even so, most of these pieces are interesting and amusing, and I hope you all enjoy them.