News at Eleven (Back Page): [Talha Ahsan] doesn't know when he'll

be extradited and so wonders if a correspondence course would be a good idea. He tells me another prisoner has now been held in detention for 13 years--plenty of time for study--but perhaps he doesn't have that long, he has no way of knowing.

When I write back to Ahsan this evening, I will tell him what I would tell any other writer--that courses aren't necessary, that the idea of teaching creative writing is relatively new and, in some cases, simply a way that institutions can make money from the hopes of would-be authors while delivering very little of use. As beauty and happiness and sex have all been commodified so, to an extent, has imagination.

from The Guardian: Different kinds of sentence

~~~~~~~~~~~