Thomas HitchnerAlso teaches English at:
UCLAThomas Hitchner
Ph.D. in English, University of California, Irvine, 2010
M.A. in English, University of California, Irvine, 2005
B.A. in Liberal Arts, Sarah Lawrence College, 2003
Dr. Thomas Hitchner is an Instructor in the Writing Program at UCLA.
He has taught writing for fifteen years in the UC system, working primarily with freshmen and beginning writers. He previously worked for five years as a Writing Center tutor at National University, and his work has been published in English Literature in Transition and British Politics Review.
Dr. Hitchner also has a background in stand-up comedy and humor writing, either of which would be his career of choice had he not been hooked on teaching as a grad student.
Dr. Hitchner builds his students' writing skills by asking them to approach shared cultural experiences — like food, a theme across many of his courses — and build a toolbox of writing skills around those experiences. His PhD dissertation covered British espionage literature, and his ongoing research interests include 19th- and 20th-century British literature, war literature, and narrative theory.
My sophomore English teacher, Mr. Valtz, was the first one who showed me how much craft goes into writing, whether it's writing a novel or poem or simply an ordinary descriptive sentence. Since then I've become a fanatic about good writing, which I believe in the right hands can change the world for the better.
I'm just finishing up Ronald Brownstein's Rock Me on the Water, a book about how LA in the early 70s revolutionized American popular culture through music, movies, and TV. As someone who lives in LA and loves the movies and music of this period, I'm still learning lots I never knew about all of it.
The HBO Max show “Hacks,” a comedy about an older female Las Vegas comedian whose career is fading, collaborating with a younger female LA comedy writer whose career is threatened by controversy. It's really good on the generation gap and on the difficulties of collaboration; it's also really funny, which not all shows about comedians manage to be.
I think this question is basically impossible, but if we're talking about one cuisine I would say that Mexican food is the one with the widest range of meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, and drinks) that I enjoy.
I'm an avid poker player, and am actually in the early stages of work on a book about how to use Stoicism to play better poker.
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