As a wannabe pirate, Morgan Cooke is more nebbish landlubber. The Florida accountant lives a solitary existence, dining alone at World of Tacos and throwing darts in a dockside bar.
Enter Morgan’s estranged father, recently released from prison and eager to search for a booty of gold ingots. Son and dad soon find themselves on Morgan’s company yacht in the middle of the Caribbean, chasing down other pirates in fast boats disguised as shrimpers.
“There are pitched battles at sea and fights in every conceivable place,” says author Keith Thomson about the swashbuckling action in Pirates of Pensacola. “But the treasure is such that it’s worth taking a shot at it, and it’s clearly better than Morgan’s fluorescent-lit workstation existence.”
Thomson is reveling in something of a Walter Mitty life these days as he soaks up reviews of his first novel in Publisher’s Weekly (a “beguiling, energetic debut”) and Kirkus Reviews (a “rollicking debut”).
A screenwriter for Sony, Paramount and Disney, Thomson had been looking for a change of pace from his often frustrating day job, and he’d always fantasized about the pirate life. The day his agent suggested he write a novel, he signed up for an intermediate fiction writing course offered by the Continuing Studies Program (CSP). “I’d heard about [short story writer] Julie Orringer, but I couldn’t believe writers of her quality were teaching,” Thomson says. “I didn’t know you could just sign up.”
That was fall quarter 2002. Thomson workshopped the first 20 pages of his novel in the course, and sold it one year later to St. Martin’s Press. Orringer, he adds, was “the perfect teacher,” and he acknowledges her help in the book.
Among CSP’s evening offerings for adults—everything from Pre-Columbian Archaeology to Why Sinatra Matters—an increasing number of students are discovering its “writer’s studio.” This spring, for example, CSP is offering 17 courses in writing, plus authors reading from their work and a panel discussion about publishing. Beginning, intermediate and advanced fiction writing consistently draw big enrollments, and there’s the occasional class in poetry, playwriting, screenwriting—even Food Writing from Soup to Nuts.
Most faculty are former Wallace Stegner Fellows at Stanford. “A whole team of imaginative young writers graduates from the Stegner program every year,” says CSP dean Charlie Junkerman. “And on the other side, we have a very educated population in nearby communities, 60 percent of whom have some sort of graduate or professional degree.”
Stephen Elliott, a former Stegner Fellow and the author of five novels, has been teaching in the writer’s studio since fall quarter 2003 and currently serves as the Marsh McCall Lecturer and writer’s studio coordinator. He teaches novel writing and fiction. “A lot of what we have are people who may not have written for a while,” he says. “They’re at a point in their lives where they want to be creative again—and not just be in sales.”
The writer’s studio offers the occasional course on how to get a manuscript over the transom at a publishing house, and literary agents provide their own perspective. Instructors also speak from experience. “I tell students that writing is a great hobby, and a wonderful way to learn about themselves,” Elliott says. “But it’s a terrible way to make a living.”
