MFA Creative Writing

In the next installment of our Alumni Interview Series, we got to pick the brain of Gwendolyn Oxenham (’06). Here are her thoughts on her creative process, the best part of her MFA experience, and what she’s been up to since graduating.

1. What sparked your interest in writing?
In third grade our class made pet rocks and wrote stories about them – I’ve loved writing ever since. I was also a huge reader and was always unconsciously imitating whatever I just read. (For example, I once read a book by R.L. Stine about the curse of a camera – whatever the narrator took a picture of then got cursed. I immediately turned around and cranked out “The Curse of the Book,” in which anything the narrator wrote about then got cursed. A fellow third-grader said to me, “Hey, you stole that idea from that R.L. Stine book!” I remember feeling genuinely shocked by his accusation.)

2. Your website shows you’ve worked on essays, novels and films. What current projects are you working on?
I’ve started playing around with fiction, which is a first for me. I’ve spent so much time writing about soccer and it feels pretty great to do something entirely different.

3. What influences your writing? What came first your interest in soccer, or writing?
I think soccer may have narrowly edged out writing. I liked them both for the same reason – the ability to get lost in them. And what’s so cool about soccer is the intimacy it creates. On our trip, once we played with someone, we were no longer American tourists, we were fellow players. We got to know people–from Kenyan moonshine brewers to Iranian women in hijab–in a way we never would have without the game. Their stories were unbelievably inspiring. Currently, my community college and arts students influence me. I have a lot of risk-takers with great stories in my classes and I continually leave my classroom feeling newly amazed by what life has to offer.

4. What was your favorite memory of your MFA experience?
Definitely our inter-mural water polo team. Other fond memories: group dinners (Lisa Gonzales made unbelievable dolmas), long walks through South Bend neighborhoods, coffee at Lulu’s Cafe. Swapping favorite book recs, teasing Matt Ricke for only eating avocados, playing for our spirited-though-winless English department soccer team. Hanging out on Angela and Lisa’s couch and attempting to absorb all their wisdom and know-how. And all-night writing sessions while sitting next to my heater, wearing three sweatshirts, and chugging gas station cappucino.

5. What does your creative process look like?
Hmm. We found an old espresso machine in my mother-in-law’s garage and that thing is key in kick-starting any writing. My best writing is by hand – it feels more like fun and less like work when I’m not staring at a computer screen. Half of the first draft of Finding the Game was written on the beach; the other half was written in the UNC library stacks. (I love college libraries.) Once I am into my second draft, I usually type and revise in a dark room with the door shut. I listen to two or three songs on a nonstop loop. What else…I achieve nothing in the afternoon. The middle of the night is my most creative time…but it’s getting tougher for me to pull all-nighters anymore. To my great astonishment, I’ve become more of a morning writer.

6. Can you elaborate on what the extra year of writing with the Nicholas Sparks fellowship year meant to you?
It was validation– there was the overcoming feeling of “oh my god, someone thinks I could actually be a writer.” It was also the first time in my life where I had the freedom to just sit around and think/dream, follow whims. That free imaginative space led to coming up with the idea for the trip around the world.

7. What advice would you give to writers who want to get into film, or published in general?
Don’t think about the publishing stage – just worry about making something you’re proud of. If you follow something you care about, you will eventually find a way to share it with others. With our film, we drove out to CA to be near our investor. After we drove across the country (hitting a deer on the way), we arrived to discover that our investor could no longer fund the rest of our film. We had nowhere to live, no jobs, no editing equipment, no way to finish our film. But we knew what we had was good and that was enough to push us forward.

8. What is the best piece of advice you’ve received?
To just get out there and see what happens. As for writing advice, Valerie Sayers once told us during a workshop, “Don’t get caught.” You know, trying to get rid of any of the writing that doesn’t ring true, anything that doesn’t seem real. And any part where you yourself are bored while writing it. If you’re unconvinced by a passage, your reader will be too.

9. What is the most exciting highlight of your life since receiving your MFA?
Bribing our way into a Bolivian prison to play pickup soccer with guys serving time for murder – that definitely comes to mind. I also just had a baby, which is a very different kind of exciting. (He has an awesome, all-natural mohawk.) And the most exciting development with my book was having it chosen as Meredith College’s Summer Reading Selection for the incoming freshmen.

10. What are you up to nowadays?
I teach writing classes at Laguna College of Art and Design (LCAD) and Orange Coast College (OCC), I play in pickup games with local Iranian guys, I sing ridiculous songs to my son, and I daydream about my next book.

In this next installment of our Alumni Interview Series, I got the privilege of asking Stephanie Guerra (2004) a few questions about the craft of writing, her work teaching in the King County Correctional Facility, and managing her hectic life with the need to write.

Can you briefly describe how you discovered you wanted to be a writer?

I’ve always loved to write. Two childhood experiences had special influence. The first was when my dad became interested in Aztecs and brought home some great illustrated nonfiction books for kids. I was in third grade, and I was so enthralled by Aztec culture that I tried to write a novel about an Aztec princess whose lover was slated to become a human sacrifice. I got thirty pages in, and that taste of novel-writing stuck with me. Then in fourth grade, my teacher, Mrs. Seagal, called me an “authoress” and stayed after school regularly to host a small writing workshop for another student and me. She made me believe that I could pursue writing in my adult life.

You teach creative writing to the female inmates at the King County Jail. What are some of the obstacles and the rewards that come along with the work?
I’ve actually expanded the program to include King County Juvenile Correctional Facility, so I’ve been working with teens lately as well. The greatest obstacle that comes with this work is the heaviness I carry when I hear my students’ tragic stories. Working with teens is especially hard. Many of them have been abused and trafficked, and it breaks my heart to read their work. But this teaching is also its own reward. I get to work with marvelous, interesting people who have powerful stories to tell. Many of them are talented writers and poets. I’ve been blown away over the years by the high quality poetry (especially rap) that some of them produce. It’s a pleasure to be at the vortex of an ongoing effort to make art without trying to sell it. There’s a strong therapeutic component as well. I’m not a therapist, and I’m very careful about offering advice, but the students really support each other in a way that resembles group therapy and it’s lovely to be part of that.

What format do you use with your students?
I don’t use a workshop format with my students. The turn-over is so high in jail and juvenile corrections that I don’t have enough time with students (either per class or over the course of months) to run effective workshops. Instead, each lesson must stand on its own. I’ve developed a literature-based writing program with a growing visual arts component. I begin sessions by reading excerpts from literature or sharing visual prompts which the students then use as springboards for their own writing. I scaffold them as they work (usually for twenty to thirty minutes), and at the end there’s time for sharing and comments. I don’t focus on correcting students’ work. We have such a short time together that I see this as a creative and emotional outlet for them, a writing community, and an affirmation that art can happen anywhere.

How has your experience thus far with your King County students affected your teaching at Seattle University?
At Seattle University, my students are pre-service and in-service k-12 teachers. My work with teens at the juvenile detention center brings a real-life dimension to my lectures and gives me evolving examples of teen writing to share with my college students. Teaching in corrections has also made me familiar with many types of behavioral problems and learning disabilities, and I can offer insights to my teaching students about the best ways to serve special needs populations.

Switching gears a bit, you’ve got a new book–Music, Love, and Drugs–slated for publication in 2015. What was the inspiration for this book, and how have you found working with Amazon’s publishing outfit?

Music, Love & Drugs was a working title. The book, now called Betting Blind, and the sequel, Out of Aces, will be out in 2015. Both books were inspired by my youth in Las Vegas. I lived on my own at sixteen in a colorful, funny, sleazy, interesting city. It gave me a lot to write about. As for the question about Amazon, working with Amazon Children’s Publishing has been excellent. They bought my original publisher, Marshall Cavendish, in 2012, and the transition was smooth and positive. ACP is conscientious about timing of payments and responses to manuscripts; my editor has remained the same, and she’s a marvel; and ACP solicits a high level of feedback on design choices. I don’t think they’d use a cover that I disliked, for instance. They’re highly focused on author satisfaction.

Given all of your engagements, what’s your writing process like? Do you outline your works before drafting? Are you an early morning writer, or do inspirations come to you in the middle of the night?
I have two young children, so I write in snatches, and I’ve learned to draft mentally before putting words down. I do a lot of preliminary brainstor

What are you reading now? Would you recommend it? Why?ming by hand in notebooks and I draft on the computer. I write for several hours on weekdays while my youngest is in preschool and I write all day on Saturdays. It adds up to about fifteen hours a week. It doesn’t matter whether I’m inspired or not; I make myself write, and as I write, the inspiration comes.

I’m reading Dostoevsky’s Demons (called in other translations The Possessed). Dostoevsky amazes me with his ability to depict both the depths and heights of the human soul. His psychological insights are profound and often disturbing. He is my favorite author.

Lastly, what advice would you give a young writer that you haven’t heard anyone else tell you?
Don’t place so much focus on publication that you lose the joy in the writing process. Once you’re published, don’t get bogged down with promoting and business details and forget to enjoy this wonderful writing life. Finally, buy A Syllable of Water: Twenty Writers of Faith Reflect On Their Art for a series of essays that are grounding and buoying at the same time.

Cheers,
Dev

For the next installment of our Alumni Interview Series, we had the privilege of catching up with Kristen Eliason (2008) and chatted with her about her new book of poetry, her time in Japan, karaoke (of course), and reading recommendations.

1) Can you tell us about the moment you realized you wanted to be a poet?

I started writing poetry when I was a junior in high school. Most of it was really awful unrequited love yack, but one poem caught my teacher’s attention and she really encouraged me. I don’t remember wanting to become a poet as much as I remember feeling that writing was as essential and inescapable as exhaling.

2) Your book, Picture Dictionary, is forthcoming from Flaming Giblet Press. Can you go into how this collection originated, how it found Flaming Giblet, and, of course, when we can expect to get our eyes on it?
Several years ago, I found that I had agreed to teach English to Japanese students on the smaller island of Shikoku. I spent eight months living in Kanonji, Kagawa-ken, with no one that I knew and only a handful people with whom I could communicate on a meaningful level. I found that a picture dictionary – a dictionary that included a word in English, its meaning in Japanese, and a picture of the word – became a shorthand for the things I couldn’t say in any language. The grief I had undergone in the passing of a man I loved pressurized the language I had left, and I wrote an elegy in structured, short stanza poems.

I found Flaming Giblet through a friend who recommended it to me as a good fit for the genrelessness of Picture Dictionary, and I am thrilled that they have added it to their 2014 lineup. It should be available in the beginning of the year.I developed Picture Dictionary as a companion piece to the short, crystalline poetry I had written—a study in issues of translation, cultural aphasia, the degradation of memory in the wake of grief, and the fragmentation of language under pressure.

3) You also have a chapbook out from Dancing Girl Press called Yours. Can you tell us a bit about what you were trying to communicate with those poems?
As I mentioned earlier, I was a little isolated during my time in Japan, by virtue of the fact that I didn’t speak much Japanese, and I didn’t know more than a handful of people who spoke English. And frankly, the person I wanted to talk to wasn’t available. These poems are missives to a beloved, and a further attempt to make heads or tails of everything that had happened in the previous months.

4) Do you have any tips for someone traveling to Japan? Anything to be on the lookout for? Must-see sights? Is it true there are establishments where people can have a private, personal room for singing karaoke to themselves?
Okay, wow, this is a huge question; the advice I would give to anyone travelling anywhere would be to really get as lost as possible. Make a plan and wander away from it as soon as you can.  Go during cherry blossom season. And try everything. Including karaoke in a private singing room.

5) Follow-up to the previous question: Do you do karaoke? If so, what are your go-to songs? (I’m partial to Matchbox 20 myself.)
Power Ballads or nothing. Bonnie Tyler’s epic Total Eclipse of the Heart and/or Heart’s masterpiece, Alone.

6) Follow-up to the follow-up: Do you mean to say that you tried the private singing room experience? If so, how would you describe it to an innocent but interested interviewer?
I definitely tried the private karaoke rooms in Japan! Something about going into a lobby and then having someone take you down a dark hallway to a sound-proof room felt seedy and dark and exciting and it was just singing. Our group of friends piled into a room with a booth to sit in, a screen for the lyrics and a sound system and jumped on the Celine Dion catalog. They had a good number of older pop songs in English as well as Japanese, so there was something for everyone.

7) Switching gears a bit, can you tell us a bit about your career in proposal writing and if or how it relates to your craft?
Proposal writing literally landed in my lap. I respond to government requests for proposals. Most of what I write at work falls neatly under the category of creative non-fiction. It’s a good job that appeals to the realism required somewhere in a writer’s life.

8) Quick! Three contemporary poets everyone should know about and why.
There are so many incredible writers, Graham Foust, Kimberly Johnson, Ben Lerner, Sawako Nakayasu, D.A. Powell, Raúl Zurita. Uhhm, but if you haven’t read them already, you should really hit yourself with the rock your head’s been under.

9) Even quicker! A three-word pitch for Picture Dictionary.
A Referential Devastation

-Dev