The Write Time is a national podcast collaboration between the National Writing Project (NWP) and the Connecticut Writing Project (CWP) at Fairfield University. As co-hosts Bryan Ripley Crandall, PhD, director of the CWP, and Tanya Baker, director of National Programs at the NWP, were preparing for the latest Write Time episode, Dr. Crandall noticed that one of the slated guests was Peter Kahn MFA’17.

"We had ourselves a Stag connection,” Dr. Crandall said. “It was an absolute delight discussing Ender’s Island and the MFA program with Peter. There’s a bit of a Fairfield love-fest within the show.”

Heading into its third year, The Write Time was launched in response to Covid-19 during the summer of 2020, when schools were shut down and teachers were seeking supplemental materials. The monthly podcast brings writers and educators together from across the nation to discuss books and the writing process. “The show boasts loads of listeners and is booked with guests through the year,” Dr. Crandall said.

MFA alumnus Kahn was invited to this month’s show to discuss the newly published Penguin Random House book, Respect the Mic – Celebrating Twenty Years of Poetry from a Chicagoland Highschool, which he co-edited with Hanif Abdurraquib, Dan “Sully” Sullivan, and Franny Choi. 

Kahn has been a high school teacher at Oak Park and River Forest High School in Oak Park, Ill., since 1994 and has recently also taught at Roosevelt University. As a visiting fellow at Goldsmiths-University of London, he founded the Spoken Word Education Training Program. Kahn recently published his first book of poetry.

“Peter has been working with adolescent spoken word artists for a very long time and is retiring this year,” Dr. Crandall said. “He’s an incredible alumnus who is changing the world and this book is going to be a huge hit in American classrooms.”

Learn more about The Write Time Podcast and Fairfield’s MFA in Creative Writing Program in the College of Arts and Sciences.