From teacher at school to Writer in the Schools

Tria Wood and her son, Eliot, 7, participate in the Writers in the Schools Summer Creative Writing Workshops.

"A writer named Jane Creighton, who now teaches at the University of Houston Downtown and is one of the people that helped start the WITS program, came to my classroom, and she was amazing," Wood said. "She was, I think, the first grown-up that took my writing seriously, and that was so important to me. She really made me want to be a writer."

Years later, after she'd achieved her goal of becoming a writer and moved to Houston, Wood got involved with Writers in the Schools to give back to the program that inspired her. She's worked with the program as an artist-in-residence and in-classroom visiting writer for the past eight years. Wood, an English professor at San Jacinto College, also teaches the Writers in the Schools Summer Creative Writing Workshops. Her 7-year-old son, Eliot, participates in the workshops and looks forward to them all year.

"He gets to explore his creativity in all these amazing ways that are just not available to him during the regular school year," she said. "I really wish that his school and other schools in the Clear Lake area would take advantage of the Writers in the Schools program because they don't currently. I think that these kids are really missing out on the amazing opportunity to connect with professional writers and to really engage with the written word."

Wood says that, although she writes "a little bit of everything," she's currently focusing on poetry and personal essays. She was the featured poet at the Emerald Isle Writing Conference in Kodiak, Alaska, earlier this year.

For more information on Tria Wood, visit www.triawood.com. To learn more about the Writers in the Schools program, call 713-523-3877, email mail@witshouston.org or visit www.witshouston.org. You can also connect with Writers in the Schools on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

ABOUT Tria Wood
AGE: 42
OCCUPATION: English professor and author
COMMUNITY CONNECTION: Clear Lake resident
FAST FACT: Wood holds a master's degree in English from Texas A&M University and a master's in art education from the University of Houston

Megan Mattingly-Arthur is a freelance writer. She can be reached at neighborhoods@chron.com.