Oregon Arts Watch just published my piece about a Northwest theater director and playwright turning Brian Doyle’s novel Mink River into a play. You can read it here: http://www.orartswatch.org/brian-doyle-and-the-language-of-the-stage/
Month: June 2018
Still Crazy (to Write Fiction) After All These Years
Twenty-one years ago, I graduated from Columbia University’s MFA in Creative Writing program with a focus on fiction writing. My intention was to find a job teaching fiction writing and focus on writing short stories and novels, all of which I did…for a while.
My first teaching job was at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, where I taught three sections of fiction writing each term, with an occasional literature class, while advising the student magazine, Grassroots. During the three years I spent there, I revised and published four short stories I had written in graduate school, one of which, Fireline, published in StoryQuarterly, went on to win both an Illinois Arts Council Literary Grant and the Daniel Curley Award for Short Fiction. I completed the novel that had been my thesis too, and found an agent for it. So far, everything was going according to plan…
But I couldn’t find a permanent job in Fiction and, since I had a solid journalism background and had published a number of essays and profiles in publications such as Poets & Writers, I started applying for Nonfiction jobs. I was ultimately hired by Portland State University in 2000 to help found its graduate program in nonfiction writing. When the agent failed to sell my novel, I started shifting my energies more and more into nonfiction and, although I worked on another novel for a time, I left fiction behind.
Now that I’m retired from teaching, I’m able to go back to my first love. I’m working on that set-aside novel again and I recently published a short story–my first in 17 years–in Inkwell. It’s called “O Kairos” and features a Greek couple scratching out a living on a small island. You can read the beginning of it here.
Utne Reader Republishes My Profile of Brian Doyle
In February, Kerry Temple, editor of Notre Dame Magazine, which had published my profile of writer and friend Brian Doyle in its Autumn 2017 issue, forwarded a message from Christian Williams, Editor-in-Chief at Utne Reader. He had just read my “beautiful tribute” to Brian, Williams wrote, and wanted to reprint it in the Spring 2018 edition of his magazine. The issue is now out, and my piece is on the Utne Reader website too, so if you weren’t able to read it before, you can find it here.
I recently wrote another Brian Doyle-related piece, this one about a theater director turning his beloved novel Mink River into a play. It includes a chronicle of how Brian came to write the book. It will go up on Oregon Arts Watch sometime in the next two weeks.
Podcast Interview: Talking about Memoir, Biography and the Craft of Nonfiction
A few weeks ago, I stopped by Jennifer Lauck’s Blackbird Studio to talk to her class about memoir, biography and writing in general. She recorded the session and it’s available free on her website. Have a listen.
Jennifer is the author of the bestselling memoir Blackbird and three other books. You’ll find more about her and her books on her Amazon author’s page.
If you live in the Portland area, check out Jennifer’s classes for writers.