"When I started the program as a playwright and screenwriter, Jim Michener was still alive—a beneficent suburban presence," Bob Ford remembers. "I think part of his notion of creating an interdisciplinary program came from his own unfulfilled wish to master screenwriting." Ford's secret wish was to write a novel. Thinking it sounded safely like playwriting, Ford signed up for a workshop in "Scene Writing," taught by visiting professor William Hauptman, himself a novelist, playwright and screenwriter. Ford wrote three or four scenes in that workshop, each of which is now a chapter in The Student Conductor, his debut novel published in 2003 by Putnam. "That book would not exist had I not happened into Bill's workshop," he asserts. It was honored with two top award from the Texas Institute of Letters in 2003, named among Booklist's and Library Journal's best novels of the season, and was the subject of a major article in the New York Times Arts and Leisure section. Putnam is waiting to read his second novel, and The Student Conductor is being shopped around Hollywood. Ford would like a crack at writing the screenplay, should that opportunity present itself.