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Instructor Highlights - KL Pereira
Fall 2009: Instructor in the Limelight KL Pereira, Writing Instructor Most people have obsessions, secret (or not so secret) passions they indulge whenever they
get the chance. KL Pereira is no different. She'll do almost anything for a good story. As a child, I'd beg my mother to read "just one more". I'd promise to clean my room,
to take out the trash for a whole month, to do all the dishes, to clean my plate. Anything to be immersed in the fairy worlds in the storybooks that lived on my bedside bookcase.
It was that feeling of being transported to a different time and place, someplace familiar yet so very different from my own world, that made me first want to write stories myself.
As an undergraduate at Bard College, KL studied literature and languages, delving into folklore and fairy tale in an effort to discover just why and how stories can convey the
special meanings of our lives. After discovering what makes telling tales so compelling, she began writing stories (often in the form of poems). She attended graduate school at
Goddard College and was introduced to experimental writing, writing that takes the components of a good story and changes it around, often in a compelling and playful way.
Experimental writing can include filtering your story through the grittiness of extreme realism and using magical elements in unexpected settings, or using a poetic form for a
memoir (among other fun and interesting techniques that liven up any story). As an instructor of memoir, fiction, poetry, and experimental writing, KL likes to encourage students to
play with the mechanical and technical aspects of their work while at the same time searching for the story, for the human experience that drives the work. We all have these stories
resting within us somewhere and it's our job to share them.
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