The woman who spilled words all over herself1997

For more than fifteen years Rosemary Daniell has led Zona Rosa, a creative writing workshop for women [and now men], ranging in age from 16 to 90 and from all walks of life, in Savannah, Georgia. For a dozen years before that, she inspired kids - from reluctant high school jocks to barefoot fourth graders, in schools from Appalachia to a Mormon town in Wyoming - to write their own poems.

She also learned lessons in life and further developed her techniques while teaching writing in juvenile detention centers, a school for unwed mothers, the Georgia state mental hospital, and the Wyoming and Georgia state prisons for women.

Now Daniell, known for her stylish and controversial memoirs, Sleeping with Soldiers and Fatal Flowers, shares what she has discovered as a poet, nonfiction, and...