Rate My Professor Lee Abbott

Lee K. Abbott served as Professor of English in the Department of English at The Ohio State University from 1989 until his retirement in 2012, becoming Professor Emeritus thereafter. He co-founded the MFA Program in Creative Writing with David Citino, Michelle Herman, and Kathy Fagan, emphasizing full financial support for students, mentored teaching experience, and close interaction with practicing writers, thereby establishing a renowned community of writers. Abbott directed the creative writing program for two terms, chaired the department's Promotion and Tenure Committee for many years, and was instrumental in numerous faculty hires. His exceptional teaching earned him the Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award in 2004, followed by promotion to Arts and Humanities Distinguished Professor in 2007. Renowned for his magnetic storytelling, Abbott influenced generations of writers through his fiction workshops and seminars, where he stressed narrative craft, nouns and verbs, and the sacred act of storytelling.