Turning pages for Creative Writing students

When she was growing up, people often asked PHC alumna Rachel Hankinson (Literature, '21) if she would follow in her mom’s footsteps and become a teacher. “No, I don't want to teach. Never, never, never,” she used to say.  

This fall, a new class of PHC freshmen met her as an adjunct Professor of Classical Liberal Arts. Armed with a master's degree in creative writing for children and young adults from Hamline University, Hankinson intends to expand far beyond Rhetoric and Composition and leave a lasting impact on the Creative Writing program at PHC.  

“I've known that I wanted to be an author since I was five,” Hankinson said. She found later in her life that the things she loved most about literature—the storytelling, humor, innocent wit, and unconditional empathy—were found best in children’s literature. This love turned into a deep passion for children’s storytelling. 

“The books that you read as a child shape you like no other books in your life,” Hankinson said. She recalls the many times she has asked others what their favorite book was as a kid, and remembered how animated and excited they became, how it impacted their lives. “To me, that was a lot more important than the ‘prestige’ of writing for an adult,” she said.  

Hankinson got the idea for her current novel in 2019 during Professor of English Dr. Cory Grewell’s Creative Writing class. She slowly pieced together the idea for a children’s novel about a magical girl and her cat companion. Hankinson continued to work on this project throughout her time at PHC and during her master's studies. There, her professors encouraged her to expand upon the book by writing it as a graphic novel, a picture book, and a young adult novel. 

Around Christmas of 2024, Grewell asked Hankinson if she wanted to come back to PHC to teach. Hankinson was apprehensive at first, but when Grewell assured her she could do it, she decided to give it a shot. “It was definitely like God placed it in my lap,” Hankinson said. After interviewing with Dr. Douglas Favelo, chairman of PHC’s Classical Liberal Arts Department, in March, she was brought on as an adjunct to lead the Westmarch publication and to teach Rhetoric and Composition and Creative Writing. 

Hankinson’s plans for the creative writing course next semester dive deep into the principles of writing. She intends to focus intensely on what she referred to as the five elements of creative writing: plot, theme, character, voice, and setting. Hankinson has plans for a large part of the course to be writing, workshopping, and in-depth peer review. She’ll also be teaching Children’s Literature in the fall of 2026, a course that was last taught in 2017 and one that she was so disappointed to have missed. “It’s very much a full circle moment,” Hankinson said.  

Hankinson said her favorite thing about teaching so far has been “watching the light bulbs come on” for her students during class. Many freshmen in her course greatly enjoy the discussion that she facilitates. “So many ideas and thoughts get a spotlight, highlighting the diversity of the minds within the classroom,” freshman Ian Thompson said.

Hankinson hopes that her students in all of her courses, present and future, learn the power of critical imagination. Hankinson defines a person with critical imagination as someone who is humble and joyful, willing to research, and willing to rethink when the research may disprove their original thesis. Hankinson hopes her students see the value in a powerful imagination, especially as Christian writers and researchers. “The acts of imagination and creativity are participating in the being of God, because we’re made in the image of God, and the only ones who can create like he can,” Hankinson said. “We're co-creators.” 

This article was originally published in PHC's student-run publication, The Herald.

Patrick Henry College exists to glorify God by challenging the status quo in higher education, lifting high both faith and reason within a rigorous academic environment; thereby preserving for posterity the ideals behind the "noble experiment in ordered liberty" that is the foundation of America.