Middle School
Worksheets
Hannah Tinti
Author and editor Hannah Tinti loves books. She understands that writing styles are diverse because all writers create in their own voices. Tinti co-founded a literary magazine in order to share with others the diversity of short story writers. Once she discovered her voice in writing, Tinti began creating her own stories and novels.
Tinti grew up in Salem, Massachusetts, with parents who were first generation Americans. They raised her with an appreciation for books. Because Tinti's parents were the first ones in each of their families to go to college, they knew the importance of education and wanted to raise her in this same manner. For Tinti, this type of family environment proved to be priceless. From a very young age, she read above grade level, and Tinti owes this to the book-friendly atmosphere of her home. While some families might call special nights those in which television was allowed during dinner time, Tinti remembers her family's special nights as those in which books were allowed at the dinner table.
Following her Catholic school education and her bachelor's degree from Connecticut College, Tinti attended graduate school at New York University where she received her master's degree in fiction writing. Tinti believes she first found her voice as a writer at NYU. She specifically remembers a class in which the instructor handed out photographs and asked the students to write from an unusual point of view. Tinti wrote from a harsh, dark point of view, and the teacher wrote on her paper, "Oh, my God, this is disgusting." Tinti was pleased that she "grossed out" her teacher, but what made her especially excited was that she captured something. According to Tinti, "I think for every writer there's one story where you make a breakthrough, where you move from the mediocre...into telling something that's really exciting, or something that people are really going to want to read." Tinti had this experience in her class at NYU.
