I woke before my alarm – still jet lagged from our 24 journey back from Norway on a Sunday in May. I don’t mind sunrise jet lag, when I wake up refreshed and ready for the day, my body feeling as if it’s already afternoon. I especially don’t complain about extra time during my morning hour, when I take my coffee outside to read from 6-7 while my children sleep and the neighborhood slowly comes back to life. In the ten days since we had left for Norway, the sun rose early enough that I didn’t need my reading light to see the pages of my book. I did still need added warmth – a fleece around my shoulders, a fire pit at my feet, my puppy’s head resting on my lap.

I was finishing The Book of (More) Delights by one of my chosen teachers, Ross Gay. I had been dipping into the entries in coffee shops on our trip, but I was taking my time with his words, so though it’s a short book, I hadn’t quite finished. I picked up my copy at the Queen Anne Bookstore during my August 2024 residency in Seattle. Upon opening the front cover to inhale the scent, I noticed I was holding a signed copy — a book that Ross Gay once held, if even for a brief moment, to mark the page. His words have marked me. So much so that I wrote my final critical paper to complete my MFA on his first Book of Delights and how he writes about delight in everyday life without discounting heartache. In other words, he pays attention.

One of the reasons I chose the MFA program I did was the requirement for 60 annotations and five critical papers throughout the program. Scott Cairns, our program’s beloved director, explained the annotations as documenting the conversation you had with the book you read. So yes, I underlined sentences and paragraphs and wrote in the margins of a lot of texts during the past few years, but the actual annotation was a short paper about the work the book did in me, the conversation I had with the author, and how I might then continue the conversation in my own work. I was able to choose a majority of the texts I annotated.

My 60th annotation was not one of my choosing, but one I found a gem in nonetheless. Mischa Willett, (the program’s incoming director!) assigned us The Major Works by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In his notebook dated August 1826, Coleridge is thinking on the page about how to continue growing and learning throughout one’s life. He decides that the best method for lifelong learning is “to procure gradually the works of some two or three great writers.” After underlining this advice, I realized that the annotations I had been writing for the past two years were a first step in identifying the few authors I gravitate toward.

I pulled up my annotation list to see who the writers were that I annotated more than once. Lauren Winner, Maggie Smith, Zadie Smith, Joan Didion, Wendell Berry, Mary Laura Philpott, Anne Lamott, Kathleen Norris, and Ross Gay. Obviously, this is more than just two or three writers, but they have written the books, essays, and poems that make me want to keep reading and keep writing. There were also three writers I was surprised weren’t on my list of repeats: Brian Doyle, Mary Oliver, and Madeleine L’Engle. While I only annotated one book from each of these authors, I have read others and they have written books I reach for often.

So, after looking up my list of repeat inspirations, I looked back at what Coleridge had to say about these collected teachers. “Amidst all other reading, to make a point of reperusing some one, or some weighty part of some one, of these every four or five years — having for the beginning a separate note-book for each of these Writers, in which your impressions, suggestions, Conjectures, Doubts, and Judgements are to be recorded with the date of each, & so worded as to represent most sincerely the exact state of your convictions at the time, such as they would be if you did not (which this plan will assuredly make you do, sooner or later) anticipate a change in them from increase of knowledge.”

I loved this final lesson from two years of reading and annotating! I have already written my first impressions of these writers and their impact on my own writing in the annotations I submitted. I have my initial thoughts. Now, I don’t know for sure that I will write up all new annotations every four or five years, but I just might try. It seems like that could be a great practice in continuing my learning as a writer, but also in seeing my evolution of how I approach their work and what I take away from it. I’m keeping this list of writing teachers close by. Their books are on a shelf next to my writing desk. I guess I’m a little greedy in keeping more than two or three authors as my teachers, but I don’t think they’d mind. So many of them seem like they would be kindred spirits as well. They write about everyday life. They weave joy and heartache. They are keen observers of people and places and let the reader meet them on the page.

Back outside by my firepit – fleece around my shoulders – I opened The Book of (More) Delights to page 236, Delight #72. Gay titled this one “How Literature Saved My Life”. In it, he writes about rereading, “or re-rereading, David Shields’s book How Literature Saved My Life.” He tells about first stumbling upon the book while “browsing a bookstore — by the way, among my favorite activities, wandering through other people’s minds, especially if it’s a bookshop whose curation I love, where it’s wandering through the writers’ and booksellers’ minds, a kind of polyamorous nerdiness.” Gay found Shield’s the way I found Gay. I don’t know if Shields is one of his chosen teachers, but I know I’ll be reading and re-reading Gay’s work for many years to come.

P.S. Who are your teachers? I’d love to be pointed to some new writers to check out.

P.P.S. My beloved puppy who kept me warm while I read outside took that beloved book of mine from my nightstand a few days after I finished reading it and destroyed the cover. He was neutered shortly after the incident. The appointment was already on the calendar but I was delighted to drop him off. Thankfully, Ross Gay is speaking at the Festival of Faith & Writing in April so I plan to get a new signed copy then.