Kate Hallett Dayton

Writing

• Red, First: A Short Short Essay

  If one seeks intimacy, looks closely, reds appear in spring long before greens.

• Renga: A Short Short Story

  That’s just like Pierre, Kobe said. He loved to hang out on the edge. This time the grader backed into the passenger side. She said it all matter-of-factly. Without bitterness. She couldn’t jump, she said. The back was piled too high with luggage. She was right next to the drop off. Pierre couldn’t see the guy backing up just as he tried to streak past. Kobe was silent for a while.

• Keys: A Short Short Memoir

  I hunt through the stack of sailing photos on my office sofa and the pockets of my briefcase at least three times. Caught in the web of phlegm where each breath was arduous, she lifted her head to me, recognized my voice.

• Toxic Garden Sequence

  The next afternoon, opposite
  Sydney’s Peace and Love,
  we dove off the boat
  suddenly surrounded
  with transparent umbrella-like
  bodies, each embossed
  with a white etching
  of a wood poppy blossom.
  Jellyfish, she said, poisonous.
  
  

• Reflected Light: Novel Excerpt

  Willem leaned toward the window and squinted. “Someone’s belaying down the face of that mountain.”

  “In the dark?”

  “He uses the light on the Swiss flag.”

  “That swinging orange thing?”

Photography

Teaching

Kate Hallett Dayton offers a variety of professional writing services as an instructor, speaker, mentor and editor. As a community college instructor, Kate has taught developmental and college composition sequences as well as business and technical writing. A Loft instructor between 1990-2004, she developed and taught a variety of courses, including creative process, personal and travel memoir, as well as flash fiction, short stories, and the novel-in-stories. She has taught poetry manuscripts as diverse as the work of Billy Collins, Jude Nutter and W.S. Merwin. In addition, she has offered Oak Table classes for four to six students in her home. In this way she has taught beginning and intermediate poetry, memoir and fiction sequences to enthusiastic students with courses tailored to the needs of the individuals and the group.