Hanne Bjornstad

When I was a child, I imagined writers sat in cozy pillowed nooks while pouring out endless cups of tea and rivers of words, probably with purring cats curled up in their laps. In my real writing life, there haven’t been too many cozy nooks, and though I once had a cat, she preferred biting over purring. My career has included projects as divergent as freelance magazine writing, translating ad copy, writing technical manuals, teaching conversational English over the phone, copy editing transcripts of legislative proceedings, and food blogging, to name a few. Instead of curling me into a quiet corner, writing has brought me out into the world to chase ideas and connect with other people. I’m always happy for a hot cup of coffee with cream, though, and one day I’ll figure out where I can make a cozy reading nook in my small house.

I hold Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in English Literature, and learning about composition theory at the post-secondary level broadened my understanding of writing, helping me to see how we all are communicators capable of effective writing. As an educator, I have taught Writing Studies at the university level and, more recently, had the privilege of learning alongside homeschoolers, both my own kids at home and teenaged extended family.

While I was deciding to leave my university teaching job to focus on homeschooling, I found Brave Writer and was thrilled to discover a program and philosophy that mirrored both what I knew intuitively as a writer and had learned about writing pedagogy during my academic career. Countless poetry teatimes, read-alouds, and family writing projects later, it is a joy for me to combine writing and homeschooling from my favorite home base, a battered dining table flanked by books and festooned with colorful pens. My house currently holds two official homeschoolers and a toddler who’s along for the ride (and the storytimes).

Hanne Bjornstad's Classes: