“I teach a 14-week semester, and one of the things I do when I have to teach literature is, for the first half hour of the class, I have the students write the beginning of a new story every week. At the end of the semester, even if they have learned nothing about literature, at least they'll have 14 beginnings that they can take with them.”

American author, educator, and physician

Ethan Andrew Canin is an American author, educator, and physician. He is a faculty member at the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. He is known for work that bridges medicine and literature, and for his role in teaching writers at one of the best known graduate programs in the United States. The available facts place him as both a practicing physician and a working writer, with his career grounded in writing and instruction rather than a single public role.