All boys. All boarding. Grades 9-12.
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Prominent Authors Mentor Young Writers
Sixth former David Willis says he has never seen English teachers Ted Blain and John Reimers so excited. “Mr. Reimers didn’t even pause to make one remark to a student,” David says. The cause for excitement was a visit to Woodberry Forest by two of the nation’s finest writers, Donald Antrim ’77 and John Jeremiah Sullivan. Each spent three days working closely with a dozen sixth formers, helping them edit and improve stories they had written.
Donald Antrim, an associate professor in the writing program at Columbia University and a 2013 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, is the author of three novels, a memoir, and numerous fiction and non-fiction articles for The New Yorker. He first worked with a small group of Woodberry writers in 2014 and returned to campus last spring to deliver the commencement address.
A graduate of Sewanee: The University of the South, John Jeremiah Sullivan is a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine, a contributing editor of Harper's Magazine, and southern editor of The Paris Review.
“This is three days of putting my forty years of writing and thinking on the table,” Mr. Antrim says. “We are using the boys’ stories to talk about those particular stories and stories in general.” Students submitted works of fiction to the author, who reviewed them before his arrival on campus. In lengthy sessions, Mr. Antrim and the boys deconstructed each other’s stories, looking to strengthen weak spots or parse a topic for its true meaning. “In the middle of a story you might find two lines of embedded source,” he says. “We show them something they don’t know is in there.”
“The chance for high school students to work so intensely with writers of this quality and prominence is virtually unprecedented,” says English department chair Ted Blain.
Mr. Sullivan followed much the same process as Mr. Antrim, working with boys who submitted non-fiction pieces. He says he knew several Woodberry graduates at Sewanee but had never visited campus. “There’s a gentlemanly quality here, and what struck me is that it didn’t seem at all fake. The respect between people moved me,” he says.
Donald Antrim says the education he received at Woodberry put him “ahead of the curve” and gave him confidence to push himself toward work that might have otherwise seemed inaccessible. He says boys graduate with “the WFS molecule,” which includes an excellent grounding in grammar and literary history. “At an early age they get perspective. I didn’t know for years what it had done for me.” He wants current students to understand the potential they have, and says treating their work seriously — “not just as the work of a sixth former” — encourages the boys to take risks with these pieces or writing they will do in the future.
“We hit them hard with what they can do and let them know they can do anything they want with this education,” Mr. Antrim says. “They can throw out something they don’t even know they have.”
By Jacob Geiger ’05
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A graduate of Sewanee: The University of the South, John Jeremiah Sullivan is a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine, a contributing editor of Harper's Magazine, and southern editor of The Paris Review.
“This is three days of putting my forty years of writing and thinking on the table,” Mr. Antrim says. “We are using the boys’ stories to talk about those particular stories and stories in general.” Students submitted works of fiction to the author, who reviewed them before his arrival on campus. In lengthy sessions, Mr. Antrim and the boys deconstructed each other’s stories, looking to strengthen weak spots or parse a topic for its true meaning. “In the middle of a story you might find two lines of embedded source,” he says. “We show them something they don’t know is in there.”
“The chance for high school students to work so intensely with writers of this quality and prominence is virtually unprecedented,” says English department chair Ted Blain.
Mr. Sullivan followed much the same process as Mr. Antrim, working with boys who submitted non-fiction pieces. He says he knew several Woodberry graduates at Sewanee but had never visited campus. “There’s a gentlemanly quality here, and what struck me is that it didn’t seem at all fake. The respect between people moved me,” he says.
Donald Antrim says the education he received at Woodberry put him “ahead of the curve” and gave him confidence to push himself toward work that might have otherwise seemed inaccessible. He says boys graduate with “the WFS molecule,” which includes an excellent grounding in grammar and literary history. “At an early age they get perspective. I didn’t know for years what it had done for me.” He wants current students to understand the potential they have, and says treating their work seriously — “not just as the work of a sixth former” — encourages the boys to take risks with these pieces or writing they will do in the future.
“We hit them hard with what they can do and let them know they can do anything they want with this education,” Mr. Antrim says. “They can throw out something they don’t even know they have.”
By Jacob Geiger ’05
Woodberry Forest School is an exceptional private school community for high school boys in grades nine through twelve. It is one of the top boarding schools in the United States and one of the only all-boys, all-boarding schools in the country.
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Woodberry Forest admits students of any race, color, sexual orientation, disability, religious belief, and national or ethnic origin to all of the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, sexual orientation, disability, religious belief, or national or ethnic origin in the administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic or other school-administered programs. The school is authorized under federal law to enroll nonimmigrant students.