writer had so much to say , he seemed to be trying to channel a raging waterfall through the tiny funnels of two short stories . His use of punctuation was idiosyncratic , to say the least . And the applicant was a priest ! Would the other students be willing to share their stories , rife as these tend to be with profanity , drugs and sex , if a clergyman was in the room ? And would this particular clergyman understand what all great religious writers know -- that true literature does n't spring from one 's certainties about the universe , but rather from one 's questions ? That said , how could our students be inhibited by a classmate who did n't hesitate to describe a 12-year-old Kenyan prostitute being paid by rich white tourists to perform sexual acts with their monkey ? As to the shapelessness of the applicant 's prose and the eccentricity of his punctuation , anyone with this writer 's gifts could be taught to structure his material and punctuate his characters ' speech correctly . If I still felt apprehensive about having a priest in my workshop , that anxiety vanished
Ann Arbor , Michigan -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Even among the hundreds of applications , this one stood out . Most applicants to creative writing programs submit stories about the angst of their suburban childhoods . This writer 's stories concerned the daily ordeals of a boy living with his family on the streets of Nairobi , Kenya , and the horrific plight of a Rwandan girl whose mother is Tutsi and father Hutu . Not only did the applicant have what writers call `` material , '' he was blessed with an uncanny ear for human speech and the poetry to describe his characters ' very unpoetic lives . I can still remember the young Kenyan boy watching his mother decant the glue she intends to sniff . The glue , the boy tells us , `` glowed warm and yellow in the dull light , '' and when his mother had poured enough , `` she cut the flow of the glue by tilting the tin up . The last stream of gum entering the bottle weakened and braided itself before tapering in midair like an icicle . '' Still , this applicant gave us pause . The