ABSTRACT
The passion and courage to see and tell the truth of a story are only the beginning. T. S. Eliot, in his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” says, “No poet, no artist of any art has his com plete meaning alone.” Eliot goes on to say that an entire order exists before the new work arrives on the scene. Therefore, the education of writers demands an awareness of all literature and history that precedes the moment the first line is put down on paper. The new has to be bounced against the back wall of tradi tion and reinvented. To create, after all, means to fill a space where there was once nothing.
