Deanna Twain
Professor Deanna Twain
Title
Adjunct Faculty of Academic Writing
About
Deanna Twain has been teaching American Sign Language and Academic Writing at Marymount Manhattan College since 2000. A former actress, she worked with her husband, producer Norman Twain who died in 2016, developing film scripts and plays and working with the writers on those projects. Their last project together, The Lifespan of a Fact, recently appeared on Broadway with Daniel Radcliffe, Cherry Jones and Bobby Cannavale.
Teaching
“I believe students need clear and understandable guidance. I have found several solid and specific strategies for writing which I call my ‘Bibles’. They are recipes, rules of the road for how to carve out a thesis, how to defend a thesis with strong ‘reasons’, how to provide solid evidence for each reason, how to create transitions within an essay and how to write an interesting conclusion. Students love to know what they are supposed to do to write a strong and convincing essay and we work, review and drill these strategies. I have never known writing not to improve.”