Meet Our Instructors: Joshua Waybright

Joshua Waybright

Major: Writing Seminars

Year: Class of 2026

Teaching at: Furman L. Templeton

What is your favorite lesson you’ve taught? Why?
One of the earlier lessons was dedicated to teaching our students about smell. Sensory experience is at the heart of creative writing, and it's one of the first steps the WBS students take in becoming young writers. To teach our class how smell is vital for accessing memory, we disguised eight smelly items (BBQ sauce, pickle juice, etc.) within covered jars and poked some holes to waft the scents out. Then, the students guessed what the object was based on the smell. Hands-on lessons like these are always fun, but having the students conjure a memory from only concealed smells helped me learn more about my new students.

What inspired you to work with WBS?
I found creative writing rather late. There was no program like WBS in my high school. For the past two years, however, creative writing has been an essential staple of my free time. With the outlets of fiction and poetry, I feel that all experiences, bad and good, hold some form of value. That’s what I want to give these kids. WBS offers the priceless ability to be able to locate yourself in the ever growing complexity of the world. For me, that's a life-changing skill and my hope is that these kids will one day look back and recognize the same thing.

What is something you’ve taught yourself to do?
I started learning acoustic last year just by watching YouTube videos. I’m not the greatest by any stretch, but it's one thing I love to do every day.

What would a perfect morning look like for you?
Waking up with the birds from a night spent camping in the mountains.