TEACHER | THE RIPE FRUIT EXPERIENCE

THE TEACHER

Leslie Kirk Campbell, imagination activist, is the founder and director of RIPE FRUIT School of Creative Writing, now in its 20th year. Highly praised as a teacher and "magical guide," Ms Campbell has led writing workshops nationally and in the Bay Area for 25 years. More than 8000 students - lawyers, midwives, journalists, children, octgenarians, and everything in between - have entered her "Greenhouse of the Imagination" where she has inspired them to trust in their own unique writing voice and guided them in their pursuit of originality and excellence in their writing.

Campbell has specialized in designing and teaching classes that provide a progressive, step-by-step process for developing writers: recognizing and eliciting creativity, discovering and developing the writing voice, the alchemy of poetry, memoir and personal essay writing, intuitive editing and deep revision, and growing the short story. She calls this the "Ripe Fruit Experience." With the confidence and craft her students have gained, many have been accepted to prestigious writing programs and published articles and books.

Leslie has made it her mission to listen to the wealth of human voices inhabiting the earth. She has traveled the world, living in Nicaragua, Thailand, and 3 years in Florence, where she studied and translated modern Italian poetry and taught at the University of Firenze.

A poet, playwright, fiction and non-fiction writer, Leslie is the author of Journey into Motherhood: Writing Your Way to Self-Discovery (Riverhead). She holds a BA in Comparative Thought & Literature from Stanford University, an MA in English & Creative Writing (poetry) from SF State University, and is currently in the low-residency MFA program at Bennington (fiction). Leslie has published feature-length personal essays in the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, sfgate, Literary Mama and other publications, and is currently working on a book of short fiction.

Leslie, a native Californian, lives in San Francisco with her husband and two sons.

What Leslie's students say about her.

See articles about Leslie Kirk Campbell

"Lighting the Way" , 07/1999

Open Up In Memoir Workshop 07/07

See articles by Leslie Kirk Campbell in SFGate.com "What, Your Kid's Not at Miraloma Elementary?
One mother discovers great SF public schools you've never heard of." 3/05

BulletProof:When San Francisco teenage gun violence comes too close to home San Francisco Chronicle Magazine 4/07

Planning to leave town because of the schools? This parent didn't, and couldn't be happier : Special to S.F. Gate 9/08

SUMMONS (the day my teen drove away...):Literary Mama online magazine8/09

THE RIPE FRUIT EXPERIENCE

RIPE FRUIT invites you to confront your ideas about your own limitations as a writer. You will be challenged to go deep, tell the truth, see what you have never permitted yourself to see and write what you have never written.

RIPE FRUIT frees you to use your imagination intensively through group writing, automatic writing, childhood writing, character writing and by writing in forms that are new to you.

RIPE FRUIT puts poetry back into your writing. Language, like culture, is fertile, generative, and above all, alive. You will become a language inventor rather than a language technician. Through practice, you will discover and express what is most important to you. Powerfully. Memorably. In a way that affects and moves people.

RIPE FRUIT cultivates your sensuality. You will develop your vitality of perception. You will rediscover what you knew as a child: how to pay attention to and notice what is around you - the details, smells, textures, colors, tastes, sounds, nuances of feeling. You will practice writing with all your senses finely tuned.

RIPE FRUIT trains you to see like a fine cinematographer, hear with the ear of a musician, perceive character, light, color, and composition like an artist. With new impetus and sensitivity, you will develop a keen and consistent awareness that will energize your writing. And, in fact, add excitement to every aspect of your life.

The RIPE FRUIT experience has been described by many as a new beginning at whatever stage of development.