Star of Lisa Zeidner's fourth novel is "fierce, funny and falling apart"
Archived article from Sep 24, 1999
By Caroline Yount
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Through her two summers at the conference, Phillips connected with other local writers, and a number of them have been meeting monthly since 1996 to discuss and critique one another's work. Other participants have found agents or editors after taking part in the seminars.
"Lisa is very well-connected in the publishing world," says Timothy Martin, an associate professor of English at Camden, who just finished serving as the department's chair. "She knows everybody and has a knack for getting people who are going to be famous."
Zeidner acknowledges that she has to "trade on personal connections" to bring many of the writers to campus. "I've been in the business a long time."
As she told a Star-Ledger reporter recently, "We're not interested in getting the hottest new authors. We get very serious writers, and some may not be famous at the moment of the conference." This past summer's authors included novelists Gary Krist, Richard Dooling, Nicole Cooley and Elizabeth Strout, Newsweek editor and children's author Veronica Chambers, journalists Jack Hitt and Lise Funderburg, and poet J.T. Barbarese.
Zeidner is especially proud to offer students a range of different approaches to writing -- both in style and genre -- and an overall makeup that is more democratic than other national writers' conferences.
"We don't have a caste system," says Zeidner, who has taught at the Camden campus since 1979 and was recently named director of graduate studies for Camden's English department. "It's not necessary to work your way from waiter to up-and-coming writer. All participants get their writing looked at closely."
Martin says Zeidner and the conferences draw many students to the campus's graduate program in creative writing. "She's one of the best-known professors in the English department."
"Lisa and other authors bring a lot of excitement to the department," says Robert Ryan, a professor of English and longtime colleague of Zeidner's. "They do the art the rest of us capitalize on."
Zeidner has a reputation as a wonderful but tough teacher. In 1993 she won the university's Warren I. Susman Award for Excellence in Teaching. "She demands a lot from her students," Ryan says. "She doesn't tolerate cliches or sentimentality in their writing."
"She's very frank," Martin agrees. "Students know where they stand with her."
Marcy Webster, a former student of Zeidner's, says the professor has high standards, but not impossible ones. "She would never hurt anyone in a workshop," Webster says. "I have known her to be very kind. She always starts her critiques with the good."
Webster came into Zeidner's class with some trepidation. As a nontraditional student in her mid-50s, she felt self-conscious and ill at ease. But the professor soon changed that. "Lisa made me feel very comfortable, very quickly. She was friendly and encouraging. I've done well thanks to her." Webster has written a collection of personal essays, for which Zeidner helped her find an agent, and has gone on to teach writing workshops.
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