The Writer's Center profile of . . . me.

I'm delighted that The Writer's Center chose to profile me in the Winter/Spring 2012 Workshop and Event Guide. Novelist Barbara Esstman conducted the interview, which you can also read on TWC's blog, First Person Plural: Fully Engaged, a Profile of Clifford Garstang.

What the piece leaves out (besides the bio I sent them . . .) is the reason they wanted to do the profile in the first place, and why they asked Barbara to do it. After I moved to Washington, DC from Kazakhstan in 1995 (that's a looong story), I began work on a novel and started taking Barbara Esstman's novel workshop at The Writer's Center in Bethesda. I got a lot out of the workshop, but I missed many sessions because by that time I'd begun work at The World Bank and was doing a lot of travelling to Asia. So I took the class a second time, and managed to make most of the sessions, and finished a draft of the book.

I then connected with a number of other writers who had taken that workshop and others and we formed a writers' critique group that met for years, even after I'd left the area. Anyway, I owe a lot to the place, and I highly recommend its classes.

And thanks to Barbara and TWC for the profile!