Memorial to Steve Tollefson, Founder of Berkeley Writers at Work:
“We know — knew — him as a colleague, teacher, mentor of new faculty, organizer of the Distinguished Teaching Award, and tireless advocate for teaching excellence across campus,” wrote Tollefson’s successor as director of the campus’s Center for Teaching and Learning, Richard Freishtat, in an invitation to the campus community.
“A fortunate few of us knew him as a writer,” he added. Through a staged reading of Tollefson’s writing, “you will recognize Steve’s wit, his humanity, his plain good sense.”
Tollefson, who died in June at the age of 66, came to Berkeley in the early 1970s to teach writing. But as a minister’s son “who tries to practice what he preaches,” as he put it, he also exercised the skills he taught. In intelligent, down-to-earth essays and stories, he tackled a broad range of topics — from names in fiction (Holly Golightly, Yossarian, Humbert Humbert, Eustacia Vye, Queeqeg were favorites,) to his sweaty efforts to memorize poems while working out at the gym.
In 1997 Tollefson created Berkeley Writers at Work as a way to focus on faculty members as writers. “Research at Berkeley is highlighted in many ways on this campus; to a lesser degree, so is teaching,” he wrote of its launch.”However, writing itself — the primary way that faculty convey the results of their research — is rarely discussed.”
Read more here: https://news.berkeley.edu/2015/10/12/reading-steve-tollefson-berkeley-writer-at-work/
. https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/in-memoriam/files/stephen-tollefson.html#:~:text=He%20was%20among%20the%20founding,vital%20program%20it%20is%20today.
A reading of a selection of works by the late Steve Tollefson, beloved long-time College Writing Programs lecturer.
Bob Jacobson's remarks on what Steve taught him as a physicist who writes very little: "Writing is Work...It's something that you can do, you can get better at, you can enjoy."Victoria Robinson reading from Steve's work: He would print a poem in 16-point type and carry it folded in his pocket on the rowing machine at RSF - “Now I’m working on the last stanzas of ‘The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock.’ …I used to worry about talking out loud while rowing but in Berkeley it’s really not that big a deal anyway…. Gyms should issue laminated copies of poems along with the towels”Oliver O'Reilly reading from Steve's work: "I tried the fictional character [name] generator one the one side and got one good hit: Godfried Rodriguez. He will have a complicated past, I suspect. But wouldn't it have been better to write the past, before the name?"