"Fiction writing is the telling of convincing lies," says Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky, an associate professor of English. "We use the same term, 'telling tales,' for both. Shakespeare says it well: the art-and craft-of fiction is in 'lying like truth.'"

Lobanov-Rostovsky should know. Although primarily a teacher and scholar of Shakespeare and Renaissance literature at Kenyon, he is also a novelist. He has published four crime novels under the pseudonym Kenneth Abel, most recently, The Burying Field.

"Writing novels seems to be a vastly unnatural act in some ways," he acknowledges. "No one is inspired every day. But the most important thing I can teach young writers is to write every day, inspired or not. It's like sports. You have to put in the daily practice, some of it wonderful, much of it slogging, before you can run a marathon."

Lobanov-Rostovsky says his teaching comes first, and he would rather discuss his expertise in Shakespeare than his critically praised crime fiction. "Teaching," he says, "is where I feel like I can make the most impact. That's why I'm at Kenyon. It's a place where exciting things happen in the classroom."