By Sadie Shorr-Parks

On my walk to Gary Fincke’s reading, I ate a large order of french fries from a particularly problematic fast-food chain. I didn’t want to listen to a reading about the tragic; I was already embodying it. I knew Fincke’s writing lingered on despair, but I didn’t know much else. In his newest book The Proper Words for Sin there are stories about a young girl drinking Drano, Three Mile Island, and the Kennedy assassination. I settled into an uncomfortable chair and prepared myself for sadness.

But as second-year fiction student John Bryant pointed out during his introduction, Fincke’s stories highlight how close despair and grace are. Despite the sad subjects, the writing I was about to encounter was funny and moving. After the reading was finished, I felt inspired and centered.

That night, Gary Fincke read the story “Someone Else, Someplace Else” from his newest collection, The Proper Words for Sin, published by West Virginia University Press. The story was instantly engaging. His voice was even and clean. The story takes place in Centralia, PA, a place where devastating underground fire has turned a small town into a tourist attraction. The story is about a man wondering if he witnessed child abduction. We wandered with Fincke past the gaudy underground fires to the much quieter and interesting business of the lives that surround it. As Fincke pointed out in the Q & A that followed: “I’m not interested in the disaster; I’m interested in the hanging on.”

When I talked with Fincke after the reading, I wanted to tell him about my grotesque experience of eating 750 fried calories during a five minute walk. I was hoping he could help me to find grace and humanity in it. But instead, we discussed endings. A feature I admire in Fincke’s writing is the way his stories make it feel okay to end on a question. “Black and White is entertainment,” Fincke said. “I like ambiguity.”

At the end of the Q & A, Fincke spoke compassionately about the mayor of Centralia and how he had been embarrassed on The Daily Show. It seemed fitting for him to touch on the softer side of an issue, to worry about the human on the sideline of the spectacle.

Gary Fincke is the Charles B. Degenstein Professor of English and Creative Writing and director of the Writers Institute at Susquehanna University. Fincke has published 25 books of poetry, short fiction, and nonfiction. He’s won numerous awards, including the Flannery O’Conner Prize for Short Fiction in 2003, the Stephen F. Austin Poetry Prize for his collection The History of Permanence, the Bess Hokins Prize from Poetry magazine, and more. His poems, stories, and essays have appeared in Harper’s, Newsday, Paris Review, Kenyon Review, Georgia Review, and others.

by Rebecca Doverspike

On Thursday, October 3rd, we received a rare treat as fiction writer and teacher Sarah Gerkensmeyer read from her collection of short stories, What You Are Now Enjoying, and gave a thoughtful talk titled “Writing the Unknown.” Sarah’s welcoming handout, illustrated with artful mythical creatures and fitting quotes related to mystery, warmed me right away to what she had to say. I drew stars next to many of the quotes while waiting for her talk to begin, but my favorite was George Saunders’: “Don’t be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die, world without end, amen.”

Sarah read a short story, “Hank,” that she’d written while in graduate school at Cornell. Her sentences took surprising turns, they had interesting edges—sometimes quick corners and other times smooth curves—a mixture of humor and insight. Listening to her read felt like walking, where one’s pulse quickens for a time rounding a corner, then rests for a while at an even pace, and then turns again, subtly. Purposeful wandering, as we angled into the world and the characters in it from baby Hank’s perspective.

After reading, Sarah spoke with openness and warmth about the importance of mystery in the writing process. “Hank” illustrated, for her, a story in which she felt completely lost and truly wasn’t sure what would happen next as she was writing. As a listener, I appreciated this sense of wandering whilst also never feeling led astray by the sentences—her language did not take a misstep.

We were able to ask Sarah several questions. Sarah’s narrative about publishing her book years after graduate school gave hope. She also said that while she didn’t publish much during graduate school, that all the work she accomplished during her MFA program was in her book, explicitly (as in the case of “Hank”), or implicitly. As my thesis advisor said to me once, “It’s a mountain, but you’re on it; you’re climbing.”

In part of her response to a question about how she balances writing with having small children, Sarah spoke about an MFA program as a blessing in terms of having time to write. “And perhaps it’s just time in hindsight,” she admitted, but it had a grounding effect: indeed, we do have time here and now to focus on our writing, and what a good and important reminder.

I asked Sarah how she balanced not-knowing with structure and she spoke about the scaffolding of different lengths; experimenting with short form helped her play with structure in a way that also allowed mystery in the writing process. Because Sarah taught composition at WVU, she also answered questions about teaching and possibilities for creative writing pedagogy in the composition classroom.

Another visiting writer, our Sturm Workshop teacher for the week, Janisse Ray, also attended Sarah’s talk and asked her questions about that short form, thinking of some of the nonfiction essays we’d been reading. It was exciting to hear a dialogue that connected our visiting workshop leader’s nonfiction aesthetic with another visiting writer’s short story form.

Sarah also responded to questions about marketing—she articulated how many writers are introverted and how far out of our comfort zone we move when we must “market” ourselves and/or our work. I appreciated such a refreshing and honest take on the publishing world—I admired how authenticity was something important to her. She told us how she found ways to market herself that didn’t feel inauthentic. For example, she mentioned a website that advertised stories as different home-brewed beers, with a description of each story’s components.

At lunch following Sarah’s reading and Q & A, as the talk of teaching, sonnets, and agents dimmed and the food on our plates diminished, I told Sarah that uncertainty is something I think about a lot. “I had a religious studies teacher in college who articulated one of the most important questions in my life. She asked, ‘Can one act ethically from a place of uncertainty?’” Those of us at the table with Sarah then discussed different kinds of uncertainty. In the case of my teacher’s question, “uncertainty” did not refer to ignorance, but a gathering of information—as much as possible—and an admittance of still, fundamentally, not knowing. I told Sarah I so liked that overlap, mystery and unknowing, between Buddhism and writing—an intersection of my interests. Writing, too, can be a process of undoing assumptions and opening. She brightened at the question (it can have that effect) and said her husband, a philosopher and teacher, would also love that consideration and that she’d relay it to him. I wrote her a check for her short story collection, and she signed it with a phrase that stays (for writing and life): “Embrace the unknown.” I was struck throughout the lunch time conversation with how many times something piqued Sarah’s interest, and how she would say, “I don’t know anything about that, but…” when it was clear she did know some, in a way, but that what she didn’t know intrigued her further, and her humility became ever-evident.

Those of us who bought a copy of Sarah’s book also received a coaster—another innovative marketing route that didn’t compromise authenticity. Of course, in knowing Sarah for just little over an hour one can see how authentic she is, and as such, I’m not sure there’s anything that could compromise that. It was refreshing to see how one’s personality can supersede business concerns rather than the other way around.

A day or two later, as I was working on revising an essay, I thought of Sarah. “I feel lost with this one in a way that Sarah would approve of,” I wrote to a mentor and friend. It was a good lost, an immersion, a trust that the language would find its way and learn to shine if I didn’t force it to be something it was not.

Sarah Gerkensmeyer’s story collection, What You Are Now Enjoying, was selected by Stewart O’Nan as winner of the 2012 Autumn House Press Fiction Prize and was longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. A Pushcart Prize nominee and a finalist for the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction and the Italo Calvino Prize for Fabulist Fiction, Sarah has received scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Ragdale, Grub Street, and the Vermont Studio Center. Her stories have appeared in Guernica, The New Guard, The Massachusetts Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Cream City Review, among others. Sarah was the 2012-13 Pen Parentis Fellow. She received her MFA in fiction from Cornell University and now teaches creative writing at State University of New York at Fredonia.

Click here to view a PDF of Sarah Gerkensmeyer’s Handout: Sarah Gerkensmeyer

by Rebecca Doverspike

Julianne Crowl and Matt Ferrance at the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, 2013.

WVU’s alumni are up to exciting things again! This past summer, Matt Ferrence and Julianne Crowl participated in the prestigious Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference set in the Green Mountain National Forest in VT. During his time pursuing a PhD at WVU, Matt also took nonfiction workshops with Kevin Oderman. Julianne is an undergraduate alum who majored in English. I had the chance to ask them some questions via email about their lives and writing since their time at WVU.

What are your lives like now?

Julie: Through my 20s and through most of my 30s I did the starving artist thing, here in Seattle: working a variety of part-time jobs, living frugally, dedicating as much time as possible to writing, reading and travel. For the past few years I have had a good nine-to-five job as a legal administrative assistant at Starbucks Coffee Company. I have a partner, Francisco, and recently bought my first house, which is really a cottage. I’m happy, although I will say I would prefer to have twelve weeks of vacation per year.

Matt: Professionally, I’m an assistant professor in the English Department at Allegheny College, with a primary charge of teaching creative nonfiction, plus a bit of environmental literature. In the fuller department of life, my wife and I have two sons, one four and a half years old, the other six months.

Matt, how does teaching affect your writing?

I am quite lucky to spend most of my teaching time in nonfiction: I have two introductory and one advanced nonfiction workshops each year. That means I get to spend a good bit of my teaching time reading, thinking, and talking about the craft issues of nonfiction. I find that quite energizing. Plus, I’m often impressed by the ways my undergraduates approach nonfiction, which is generally brand new to them. I find myself saying, huh, quite a bit in workshop, when a student sees an essay in a way I’d never quite considered

What are some of your fondest memories from your time at WVU? What did you learn here that you still carry with you or that has influenced/shaped your lives?

Julie: I loved Morgantown itself and I’ll bet it’s even better now. I loved my circle of friends from the Honors Floor and am eternally grateful to the nurturance and mentorship I received from Gail Galloway Adams. Two other favorites: Susan Jennings Lantz and Dr. Susan Shaw Sailer.

Gail and I have corresponded for 20 years now, and excuse my Luddite tendencies but I do mean we have corresponded in handwriting, on paper. I love getting a card or letter or postcard from Gail. I have a whole archive of encouragement from her and can’t even explain how privileged that makes me feel. She is part of my soul.

Matt: Well, first, full disclosure: I was a PhD student there, focusing on American Lit. But Kevin Oderman was gracious enough to allow me to take the grad nonfiction workshop (twice!), and I think of those times as among the very best of my academic training. I learned to actually revise in those workshops, something I’d only ever done nominally, even when completing my MFA at a certain rival city school up the interstate from Morgantown. I hear the voices of the workshop classes in my ear constantly while revising now, particularly Kevin’s. Mostly calling out overwrought sentences and structural flabbiness.

How has the trajectory of your writing shifted (or grown/evolved/changed) since your time here?

Julie: I have kept a diary since I was fourteen. In college I wrote fiction; a few years after college I began writing memoir. Now I would say I write mostly memoir, some fiction. Poetry only rarely.

Matt: WVU got me back into nonfiction, so I think of it as a restart to the writing career I’d originally imagined. I had somehow become a (bad) fiction writer midway through my MFA, and continued on that path for too long. So I’ve really just continued on the trajectory that I resumed here, able to focus my creative energies on the essay, broadly conceived. I’ve certainly become more experimental in the past few years, something I just was beginning to do when I was at WVU, playing now with more radical structures and forms.

What did you take away from the Bread Loaf Conference? What did you enjoy most from the Blue Parlor Reading?

Julie: It was in one of Gail’s creative writing courses that I first heard about Bread Loaf, this historic wonderland for aspiring and successful writers. I applied more than once before I was accepted (so don’t give up). I knew Gail wanted me to go to Bread Loaf and I always dreamed of going, but it was not until I actually went that I truly understood all the fuss about it. The physical setting is stunning, the most beautiful place I’ve ever been in the United States. The atmosphere was congenial; the nonfiction workshop I was in (with Cheryl Strayed) was great. It was amazing to spend ten days with so many people who are dedicated to writing. The evening of Extreme Hayrides was pretty awesome as well; people were laughing so hard, it was like being a kid again.

Each Blue Parlor reading allows ten students to read for five minutes each in a salon setting in the Bread Loaf Inn. In general, I love reading in public. Matt and I both participated in the first ever Bread Loaf Blue Parlor reading dedicated specifically to nonfiction. Matt read right before I did, then introduced me as “a fellow Mountaineer, Beast of the East, the Pride of West Virginia…” So I came up to the podium laughing. My reading went well, but Matt’s intro was the most enjoyable moment!

Matt: I was fortunate to go back to Bread Loaf this year as the Carol Houck Smith Returning Contributor in Nonfiction, and I was thrilled to return. The effect of listening to the fabulous morning craft lectures and the relentless (in a good way!) stream of readings is, for me, a tremendous motivation to get to work. Plus, as a teacher, I find it humbling and instructive to place myself back into the middle of a workshop space instead of always at the head of it. Perspective and kindness come from doing that, remembering what it’s like to have your work on the undefined116122.undefined116123.undefined116124.undefined116731.undefined213152.docket. Beyond that, probably even above that, are all the friendships I’ve made with writers from across the globe. That’s created a wonderful wideness to my community of fellow writers who I can lean on for technical and moral support.

Any advice for current MFA students as they look to the future?

Julie: I did not go the MFA route myself, but I have advice for undergraduates who are majoring in English and focusing on creative writing: ignore the people who ask you what you’re going to do with your degree. Never since I graduated have I ever wished I had majored in engineering or business. I feel like I “use” my B.A. from West Virginia every day of my life, because so much of my time is spent reading and writing, focusing on what I love.

Matt: Patience, I think. In life, as with writing, focus on the process instead of the product. I mean, it took me almost 10 years post-MFA before I published anything, but for me those 10 years were an important gathering of material, craft, perspective, all that. As writers, we know we ought to think this way, but we’re bombarded by embarrassing conversations that include “where have you published” and “oh, a writer, like JK Rowling” and “I’m a writer, too.” This often left me with only sputtering replies, some balance of politeness and explanation that I wasn’t after publication as much as quality (even though I desperately was after publication, too, of course, because how can’t you feel that way?). In time, I realized that the work is the work, is the joy, is the reason. Pragmatically, I think I’d also suggest diversification, particularly for those who seek academic work. We need lots of tools in our belts, so we can offer something different and distinct to potential hiring departments. My PhD work in American Literature, and particularly my ability to think and teach as a cultural studies-infused lit person, was tremendously helpful in snagging my job. Yes, I was hired as a creative writer, but in a liberal arts college like mine (and I totally recommend that atmosphere for writers who want to be writer-teachers!), I also have to be able to teach various intro and advanced lit courses.

Who do you like to read these days?

Julie: Always, I read voraciously from the Seattle Public Library and the King County Library System. I never read electronically; I find great pleasure in going to the library and coming out with a massive stack of books which have caught my attention.

Matt: I’ve been reading a lot of Brian Doyle, whose voice on the page is distinctive and tremendous. Scott Russell Sanders, for classic essayistic meandering. Brenda Miller, master of structures. Eula Biss. Lia Purpura.

What’s your writing process like? What’s something you’ve written recently that excites you?

Julie: First I need a cup of coffee. I keep handwritten notes or notebooks on a topic, then I move to the computer and begin typing the notes into manuscript form. I have a book-length project in progress but for the past year or so have been focusing on writing shorter pieces (3,000 to 6,000 words). Shorter projects are easier to finish! But I am building up to the big one.

I like the three essays I wrote over the past year. The first won 2nd prize in a nonfiction contest at the Write On The Sound Conference (near Seattle) last fall. The next essay got me into Bread Loaf, although it got so many suggestions in workshop that now I have to go back and revise it. A third essay I am about to send out to my favorite literary magazine; it’s my favorite because they’re nice to me. They keep giving me encouraging rejection slips.

Matt: My process begins with some clear and absolute scheduling of writing time: with the various demands of my teaching and my desire to be engaged with my family life, it’s easy to not make room. So I have door-shut, no-one’s-home writing hours factored into my work week. In the actual drafting process, lately I’ve been writing in narrative chunks, then fiddling with them by using Scrivener (which I heartily recommend) to shape lyric and collage style essays. Sometimes, I wind up assembling the chunks into something that looks a lot like a regular essay, too, but everything starts with writing a single compressed scene, then another, and another. Mostly, my experience in this process has been to absolutely hate everything I’ve done until I jiggle it enough until the parts fall into place. Then I figure out what I’ve really been writing about. Hate it some more. Jiggle again until the essay suddenly works. I’ve been really happy with this, and I’ve generated some essays that I care quite a bit about. In fact, I’ve just finished the draft of a new manuscript in which I’ve rewritten my environmental biologist father’s old lab manuals as a series of “field trip” personal essays, using the lab structure and natural content as ways to find metaphor and insight. Also, I’m pretty pleased to have persevered through the revision of the project that began as my dissertation and will be released in 2014 from University of Tennessee Press, All-American Redneck: Variations on an Icon, from James Fenimore Cooper to the Dixie Chicks.

What influences your writing?

Julie: Other writers—other personalities like my own—influence my writing. Writers who came before me and writers writing now. Writers who work hard and finally begin to break through: that is inspiring to me. Also, I write with the constant awareness that I am a Pittsburgh native on the west coast.

Matt: Science. Poetic logic. Annie Dillard.

What keeps you writing?

Julie: I’m really grouchy when I don’t write. I am wired to process my experiences through writing, in smaller or larger doses of solitude. I am very nostalgic (or something) and always want to capture life on the page, capture it well enough so that someone feels like they’re watching a movie. I want my writing to pull people in, the way great writing has always pulled me in.

Matt: Really, I just love doing it, love turning the flashlight on myself and finding connections I hadn’t thought about and wouldn’t, if not for the essaying.

-

Julianne Crowl is a native of southwestern Pennsylvania and attended WVU from 1988 to 1992. After one additional year in Morgantown, working and saving money, she moved to Seattle in October 1993 and has lived there ever since.

Matt Ferrence earned his PhD at WVU in 2010, and is now an assistant professor of creative writing and literature at Allegheny College. His essay “Spiritual Dangers” won the 2013 Montana Prize in Nonfiction and will appear soon in Cutbank. Other work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous places, including Blue Mesa Review, Gulf Coast, Gettysburg Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Sport Literate. A book of cultural criticism, All-American Redneck, will be released in the spring of 2014 from University of Tennessee Press.

by Nathan Holmes

Mark Brazaitis’s short story collection The Incurables has won another award—this time, the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award in Prose, sponsored by Grassroots, the literary magazine of Southern Illinois University Carbondale. The award is given each year to published works—a book of prose and a book of poetry. As this year’s prose winner, Mark will participate as a panelist at the Devil’s Kitchen Fall Literary Festival, held at SIUC, where he will read from his collection on October 17th.

The Incurables came out in August of last year via University of Notre Dame Press. Since its release, the collection has been recognized as a finalist for the ForeWord Book of the Year Award, featured on The Diane Rehm Show, and has won the Richard Sullivan Prize in Short Fiction. Which is to say, this book has been widely recognized by readers, judges, and critics as an impressive collection.

I won’t go on too long about the merits of these stories, but I particularly enjoyed the sense of cohesion I felt when reading this collection. Many of the stories are subtly connected, and not just in terms of the much-discussed setting or theme—characters even sometimes make appearances in more than one story. I really enjoyed this aspect, and it reveals the way in which the stories have been carefully arranged.

It’s difficult to say which stories are my favorite, but I’m leaning toward “The Bridge,” “This Man, This Woman, This Child, This Town,” and the title story, “The Incurables.” I found these stories to be particularly gripping and memorable. I often find that short story collections sometimes offer only two or three really strong stories, and the others become overshadowed by those heavy hitters. But this is not the case with The Incurables, in which every story hits hard and has that effect where you have to rest the book in your lap for a moment to digest everything before moving on to the next story.

Needless to say, I highly recommend the collection, especially for aspiring writers, and doubly for writers in our MFA program! I’m glad to have the opportunity to learn from Mark as a professor, and to have access to these stories from somewhat of an insider’s perspective. Read more about The Incurables and Mark’s forthcoming novel, Julia & Rodrigo, here. Also check out this interview, in which Mark discusses his stories and his writing with a recent alumni of the MFA program.

Congratulations to Sadie Shorr-Parks whose nonfiction essay, “The Language of Boxes,” (robots and daydreaming and stress, oh my!) is forthcoming in the October Issue of Defunct.

Jacqulyn Wilson has two poems, “Morning Walk,” and “Distraction,” forthcoming in Pudding Magazine. Look for their Summer Issue in late September. Congratulations, Jaci!

by Christina Seymour, Jessi Lewis, and Morgan O’Grady

Christina (3rd year, poetry):

Three of our MFAs just returned from a ten day trip to Norway. The collaborative creative project, hosted by the University of Bergen, included students from West Virginia University, Temple University, the University of Minnesota, Duluth, and, of course, the University of Bergen. Director of the Center for Literary Computing, Sandy Baldwin, generously established this course and initiated this process, which began with researching the Gray Barker Archive. Once in Bergen, several projects emerged within a frame narrative that will soon viewable by all.

I, for one, found the experience life-changing in the sense that I now look at home differently. I saw new, unforgettable landscapes. I kayaked on a fjord. I forged connections with a talented, diverse group of students. I ate new foods, became much more comfortable with flying, learned more about interaction and personality, and philosophized about image, layering, and structure in a more objective way than I could have in my regular setting. And I performed karaoke with all these new friends and professors.

Jessi (3rd year, fiction):

It’s hard to walk away from a trip like this without feeling an immediate influence. The tools we used for online narrative creation in the course allowed us to take our trip and consider it in a unique light. Even the green of the country side and the Norwegian language were reflected in our final collaborative projects. It’s a great way to experience a new culture, and then respond to it with others.

Morgan (2nd year, poetry):

This project worked on stretching my comfort zones and learning how to work with highly skilled people. At times there were so many ideas that it was difficult to stick with one narrative! Being in Norway allowed for the project not only to explore our ideas, but how these ideas fit in with the landscape. It was a lovely trip and I was lucky enough to meet a lot of awesome artists.

Photos courtesy of Christina Seymour:

Sandy, driving us to Flam.

Three excited travelers in front of a large cruise ship on the fjord in Flam (with an umbrella).

A stave church in a small town on our long, winding journey to Flam. Planes, cars, and ferries that day.

Bergen (the wharf area, Bryggen)

After kayaking on the fjord in Flam!

by Rebecca Doverspike

On the last Thursday before before the start of the Fall 2013 semester, we held our 3rd annual Rooftop Reading at Cafe Montmarte atop Hotel Morgan. Such a reading began, thanks to our COW predecessors, during my first year entering the MFA program and it was such a wonderful welcoming that it turned into tradition. We couldn’t have asked for clearer weather—light blue skies and a sun setting just a little faster than during the heart of summer—as we heard from 3rd and 2nd years as well as some brave 1st years. Thanks to Cafe Montmarte for hosting, all the COW officers (especially President Hannah McPherson) for putting on the event, everyone who attended and those who read, and, to our ever-encouraging faculty. It was wonderful to reunite and meet new faces, and geared us all up for an energetic and productive year. Below are some photos (all courtesy of Fiction Professor Glenn Taylor):

2nd year MFA, Xin Tian, reading her ever-eloquent poetry.

2nd year MFA and COW President Hannah McPherson reading some thoughtful creative nonfiction about her time in Turkey.

2nd year poet and CRR Editor, Patric, reading powerful words involving loss and bus rides (sometimes interwoven).

MFA Director Mary Ann Samyn and English Chair Jim Harms (both fantastic poetry professors), ready to listen.

2nd year nonfiction writer, Sadie, gives us witty and thought-provoking insight as she ponders how childhood experiences shape a person.

Some old and new MFAs chatting after the reading.

Writers come in all heights! From front to back: Sadie, Morgan, Mari, and John.

by Rebecca Doverspike

Troy Copeland on his parents’ porch in Manchester, GA.

“For the word, according to the hermeneutical and theological traditions of the age, was God become flesh. It was the active pursuit that was to succeed and transcend itself by embracing its own broken and inarticulable striving. It was the agony of bridging the worlds of subject and object and all the punctuated spaces in between. We sometimes call this humanity.”

-From “Echoes to the Senses”

Reading an essay written by Troy is an active experience and thus reminds one that reading is an experience. In “Echoes to the Senses,” for instance, Troy opens the essay by asking readers to imagine a “large young man of twenty-two. He’s of African descent. He’s standing waist-deep in the tide holding a Norton Anthology of Poetry,” and then shifts from third person to second and first, “But you don’t know that, because you see me from a distance as two of my friends claimed to have seen me down the strand, struggling to keep my balance in the surge and roll of the waves. The book is open in my hands and I’m shouting over the symphony of the sea. I’m reading Tennyson’s Ulysses.” After further description of what we can see and what we cannot, as well as what we might be able to imagine, he writes, “And in imagining that, you have entered the gulf with me.” I see that sentence as key to Troy’s work as a whole—his writing illustrates and enacts the interwoven qualities of truth and imagination, dreams and reality, and he calls upon readers to participate in the performance of language and its potential to reveal.

Troy often uses the second person in his essays. As we sat in his apartment with a window overlooking a gorgeous dip of fields to talk about his work, I asked him about this move to directly address the reader and he said, “Performance of self-aware consciousness is that dynamic between the personal and collective—you’re always both at the same time. Part of what it means to be self-aware is to interact with yourself as part of a whole, as part of a collective. If, as a reader, you’re being addressed directly, you become, at least for that moment, you become aware of participating in that dynamic.” The dynamic he’s referring to is between the personal and the collective, and the medium here is words. “By being pulled into identifying with the narrator, you’re totally immersed in the text at that point. If you’re resistant to participating in the words, literally, viscerally, then you’re not going to respond well.” I asked Troy if he participates in the words through writing as well, and he said, “Yes—writing is a means of performing self-awareness.” That sense of performance also speaks to the writing process. When reading one of Troy’s essays, I often have those “ah-ha!” moments when we arrive at particularly insightful points (a kind of “Yes!” marginalia), and it feels to me like Troy the essayist is discovering those things in the act of writing, just as I’m discovering them in the act of reading.

Troy’s been writing narratives since a very young age. Stories were a way to process experience, part of the routine in his day—going to school, homework, hanging out with friends, and then taking time to interpret experiences into “a snippet of a story of some kind.” In “Look Away, Look Away,” Troy describes grade school in Manchester, GA and creating stories in which he spun his friends into characters and took them to different galaxies and dimensions. The world in those stories and the world from which those stories were imagined from affect one another profoundly, of course. When Troy and I sat down to speak about his writing, I asked what draws him to write about childhood. “There’s something special about childhood in that children don’t necessarily see that there is any meaningful contradiction between what they imagine and what they choose to believe and what’s ultimately ‘real.’” He went on to say, “We learn to normalize our performances to the degree that some are esteemed as being more real than others. But until we’ve been socialized to that extent, we can perform and experience multiple realities as being equally viable or equally valid.” Narrative has always been involved in Troy’s “play,” whether casting roles (and, interestingly, he sometimes cast himself as the hero and sometimes as the villain, recognizing in us the capacity for each) and writing various adventures or, in solitude, twirling branches to a blur in which he saw stories and how they would move.

In the same breath, Troy connected play as an acknowledgment of narrative to spirituality: “You know, in the Judea-Christian heritage there’s the idea that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like children. I think what the writer is referring to in that is that there’s this other reality you can live in, but only if you can think like a child and hold multiple realities as being valid at the same time.”

Troy learned from an early age how to hold the validity of multiple realities. “When I was 5 or 6 years old, my father told me there were two Laws to be obeyed, the Law of Nature and the Law of God. He said, ‘You can’t obey one and not obey the other, and you’ve got to find a way to obey them both.’” I thought about some of the conflict in Troy’s essays, struggles and fights which did not seemed frowned upon. “Did morality feel complex to you growing up,?” I asked, thinking of how Troy’s father was also a preacher. He said it did, and that his father, too, never kidded himself about “the complexity of what he was asking me to grow up and be, what he was asking me to do.” Troy said his father taught him him that it’s okay to defend himself—taught him not to fight if at all possible, but that if it’s not possible, self-preservation is a Law of Nature (and ultimately, the Law of Nature is also God’s Law). Sometimes, Troy’s father said, “I’m telling you this as your preacher,” and other times, “I’m telling you this as your father.” I wonder if that taught young Troy about the various ways of performing identity and roles that shows up in his writing now. Of such writing, in relation to these two Laws, Troy said: “I try to nod a great deal to both. Visceral life experience and at the same time, all these ideas you’re trying to discuss. You don’t have to really choose one or the other—theory and ideology or visceral life experience—it can be both.”

Troy’s father nodded to both in his conversations with Troy as well. “You see the stars at night, right?” He asked Troy Pre-K, “Well the sun is one of those up-close. The reason why they look so small is ‘cause they’re so far away. But they’re huge. The Earth is barely the size of a speck of dust compared to those stars.” Troy laughed after he told me this, “Imagine having the burden of that when everybody else thinks that the stars are these tiny little things hanging up in the sky. You kind of walk around and want to start talking about this stuff and they say, ‘What are you talking about?’” Now the childhood stories in “Look Away Look Away” make even more sense to me—Troy knew about the existence of other galaxies in which to play, in which to enact different possibilities of identity. Once again, his narratives were not an escape from reality, but a going into, illustrating the ways in which they’re naturally interwoven.

One of the things I most admire about Troy’s essays is how the psychology within them is not reductive. Troy gives the reader such a thought-provoking mixture of personal narrative and hints of analysis, but leaves the interpretation at least partly open. For instance, in a recent essay, Troy writes about making narratives out of the dust “devils” on the playground with his grade school friends. He writes: “One of the improv scripts I conjured when we were still second graders involved us being detectives trying to solve the mystery of the Dirt Devils. I started that one at school, actually—before the start of summer. Several white boys allowed me to convince them that the whirling clouds of dust that sometimes materialized on the playground on windy days were actually demons from another dimension trying to enter our world. If we could only capture one…”. He moves from that to, “And then we actually did see something” —a red light along the elementary school wall. He lets the reader wonder if it’s because there’s a particular narrative in mind that allows that sight (the things we perceive shape into our already-held worldview, while at the same time such perceptions can change that worldview), or if there’s a subtle distinction happening between “made-up” and “real,” (and remember that children can hold them as non-contradictory truths), etc. Troy’s work shows us how imagination and reality do not constitute a binary—he shows us how these realms affect one another and constitute continual inter-play.

When I asked Troy what fuels his writing, he said, poignantly, “Love of conscious existence.” After a slight pause he added, “Which is kind of redundant to say because there’s no awareness or experience of existence that’s not through consciousness,” to which I suggested, “Yes, but maybe writing draws that out more?” and he agreed, “Yes, writing is a way of being aware of that kind of awareness.” Troy then told me how it was through writing his dreams—he has numerous dream journals—that really called him to further pay attention to waking experience and to process that through narrative as well, ”...especially when I’m writing an essay—I’m processing experience as I would a dream when I’m doing dream-work: that’s what writing the essay is to me—critiquing experience as text. That comes from me considering dreams as types of texts.” He first began writing his dreams during college at the University of Georgia. He had a mentor, Howard, who encouraged him to talk about his dreams, and who introduced him to Jung’s Memories, Dreams, and Reflections.

After college, Troy taught for one year at Manchester High School (his Alma Mater) before traveling to Japan with Howard and his wife Elizabeth where they taught English to various age groups. He told me a beautiful story of taking his notebook to a shrine for the Sky God, and writing while sitting on its steps. One day, a dog ran ahead of its owner (who came screaming behind), grabbed the notebook out of Troy’s hands, and took off with it. Troy laughed as he told me he decided not to write at the Sky God’s shrine any longer. This is just another instance in which myth interweaves with life.

When he returned from Japan, Troy taught literature at Cedar Shoals High School in Athens, GA for 13 years. (I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Troy’s a tremendous teacher. He cares very much about his students. One day, in response to a composition course he’s teaching at WVU, he casually said, “I don’t need to be a hero. I just need to provide opportunities for heroism”.) He also started attending graduate school part time at Sewanee, where he took fiction workshops. At that time, one of his teachers said to him, “You have everything you need to be who you want to be. The problem is that you don’t see yourself as a writer. You only write when you have extra time.” Troy said that was part of the impetus behind quitting his post at the high school and coming to WVU for graduate school full-time. He began this program as an MA student, eager to study with Dr. Earnest who’d also been at Suwanee for a time. Troy speaks of changing from an academic to a Creative Nonfiction track as a meaningful coincidence—he took a Nonfiction workshop with Dr. Kevin Oderman the same Spring semester that Dr. Earnest decided to continue his career elsewhere. Troy spoke so highly of that workshop, of collaboration with his peers and mentor, Kevin—it allowed him to discover his “point” in coming here. “Do you see yourself as a writer now?” I smiled. “Yes,” Troy said with confidence, “I think that’s the biggest gift this place has given me.” It’s hard to imagine a path in which the essays Troy’s written don’t yet exist in the world, and I’m as grateful as a reader that circumstances revealed such a path for him as he is grateful as a writer. I believe many others feel the same way, and will continue to as Troy’s essays circulate out into the world.

When I asked Troy who he likes to read (other than Jung), he mentioned Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, William Faulkner, Melville (Moby Dick, mostly), Hawthorne’s short stories, and grew particularly excited to exclaim about George Eliot’s Middlemarch. “Here, the narrator steps into the story and becomes a character to express himself or herself. Steps in to be a character, and then steps out to be a narrator.” He added, “Milan Kundera does the same thing. You’ve got this story going on and then he pulls back up out of that story to reflect and pontificate upon that story. He’s becoming a character somehow by reflecting. Writing is a means for voice to characterize itself through self performance. Whether first, second or third person, a speaker is a character that portrays himself as an other.” I can see why this appeals to Troy, as I think his writing as a performance of self-awareness, where part of that awareness includes the collective—where through reflection one can become a character— does something very similar. And perhaps this excites us because it’s so near to our perceptions of the human experience, in which we partly enact and embody our personalities, but in which we simultaneously observe, reflect, and process.

In an a Comparative Religious Ethics course I took in college, we read an article by Wilfred Cantwell Smith that claimed friendship, love, is a prerequisite to any true dialogue, any true exchange of perspectives and worldviews. I asked Troy some questions from that place of friendship, rather than as merely a colleague interviewing him, and I think he responded in kind. I asked him if he felt he had to be “careful” about race in his essays. “When you’re an African American writing about being African American,” he paused, “Well rather, I should say, when you’re an African American writer writing about yourself, you’re going to always be writing about race to some extent, even if you never do so explicitly or intentionally. But I don’t like the idea of allowing the notion of race to overshadow my experiences as a person or my voice as a person.”

He distinguished material conditions and the human spirit. “Spirit, which I associate with consciousness, and material conditions are mutually constructive… it’s not accurate to describe one as emerging from the other so much as they coincide.” Our conversation often came back to that notion of mutually constructive elements—truth, imagination, dream, reality, material, spirit—and the meaningful struggles which result from holding multiple possibilities as valid.

Troy’s writing draws together all those elements and skillfully structures narratives that bring the reader along with his thinking process. He blends that thinking process with powerful storytelling, those visceral life experiences. He does this whilst being aware that he’s working within the medium of language. I return to “Echoes to the Senses,” to the narrator knee-deep in the ocean reading Tennyson aloud, here addressing the reader again:

“Hang in there. I suppose this means that I’ve got more exposure to render, more of an exchange to effect. The words are serving several functions, now. I’m both sharing and hoarding myself in turns of phrase, like a soul re-incarnating itself in turns of conception. I’m creating spaces through which experiences may pass like breath through panpipes. For I endeavor to tell you All…if only by speaking or writing I could tell you much of anything.”

And he does.

by Jesse Kalvitis and Rebecca Doverspike

Jesse and Rebecca at the Annual Graduate Colloquium welcome table, before presenting. Spring 2013.

In the spirit of collaboration, Jesse and I decided to write an article together about our time in WVU’s MFA program these past two years as we head into our third and final year. We each wrote intros for the other, and then played a question and answer game. First, we each responded as we imagined the other would, and then we ranked one another’s answers and filled in the missing components as ourselves. We hope you enjoy!

Rebecca’s Intro. to Jesse:

Jesse and I have collaborated since the beginning of our graduate school endeavor as office-mates and fast friends. Our first semester teaching composition, we developed an activity that sent our students out into Morgantown to interview local businesses and nonprofit organizations for feature article practice—an attempt to bridge academia and local diversity, to open the space for reflection about what it might mean to be part of a community. It seems to me that Jesse exemplifies what it means to be a vital part of a community, just by being herself. She holds so many connections to Morgantown as a place (“See that yard over there on Pietro Street?” she’ll ask as we’re crossing the Walnut St. Bridge. “That’s where I used to grow raspberries, Jerusalem artichokes, some perennial herbs, and about eleven pots of basil per summer.”) and to people (just sit outside Colson with her and see how many stop to hold meaningful conversation with her!). In Colson Hall, she keeps an open office full of plants, an adorable coffee pot, food, and post-it-notes that hold several purposes, including scribbled notes and drawings to put on her office-mate’s desk when she’s having a trying day. Other GTAs come here for a moment of pause—to sit, talk, breathe—that’s the kind of space Jesse creates. I think I’ve also developed a particular Jesse-induced laughter, as her insights often pierce through in the form of delightful humor.

Jesse pours her energy into a myriad of interests and makes them bloom. While working toward an MFA in creative nonfiction, Jesse’s simultaneously completing a certificate in women’s and gender studies. She loves to garden, cook (her gluten-free pumpkin rolls are forever the taste of November to me now), make lists of her interests (psychology, literature, farming, etc.) in order to find their overlaps, and create amazing gifts catered thoughtfully to her fiancée, Catherine’s, interests (I’m talking a real-life Dungeons & Dragons character sheet and personalized M&Ms). She’s naturally nourishing to whatever and whoever she’s around, ever ready to provide sound advice or delicious soup or a fitting book title. The details to which she’s attentive as a friend and person also show up in her essays: she writes gorgeous, precise, that’s-just-it-yes sentences. Just as Jesse’s resourcefulness and knowledge make her a vital part of this city and academic community, so too does she render personal experiences and observations so well on the page that its importance expands beyond those specifically wrought moments and takes one out into the larger world.

In the past two years, Jesse’s become one of my closest friends, and yet the more I learn about her, the more my admiration deepens. She reminds me that sometimes the more we know someone, the further that person’s mystery expands—that knowing can mean ever-more to explore rather than closing the door on something already understood. It’s my favorite way to know a person, and a place, and Jesse has a knack (as a friend and a teacher) for reminding people of those most genuine aspects of themselves, and for drawing them out.

Jesse’s Intro. to Rebecca:

When I first spotted Rebecca two years ago, across the room in our graduate teaching assistant training, I had already identified a few colleagues I was sure would be my favorites. The guy with the bandanna and the sarcastic tee shirts. The one with the unironic trucker cap. The one with the cool dreads and booming laugh. Rebecca was a stealth addition to this list. She radiated calm and poise with every movement, self-assurance with each quiet glance and thoughtful smile. I was prepared to be utterly irritated by sharing an office and a genre with someone so put together, so chill.

That turned out all right. This is not to say that the cover was inaccurate, per se, but rather than the book was infinitely more complex than that first glance implied. Rebecca’s calm poise and self-possession comes through both in her life and her writing, yes, but it is far from irritating. The shifting layers of contrast only highlight and add poignancy to her moments of passionate indignation, her powerful words. I couldn’t ask for a more interesting, better suited office-mate, and her writing consistently knocks my socks off.

My favorite Rebecca-moment, which I hope and suspect she’ll leave in while editing this, occurred during our second semester. We were roaming around downtown Morgantown, speaking in person with people we wished our students to interview during their feature article field trip. In the sandwich shop on Walnut Street, I mused that the sandwich called the Fat Bitch “just sounds tastier to me than the Fat Bastard.” Rebecca replied without missing a beat, “That’s just ‘cause you’re gay.” I laughed so hard I nearly collapsed. She pretended to be suddenly very interested in the draft of our assignment sheet.

That, of course, is not true. Oh, the story’s true, yes, and the fact that it delights me is undeniable. The idea, though, that I can isolate one favorite Rebecca-moment is nonsense, as is the expectation that I can encapsulate and describe her brilliance any more clearly today than I could two years ago. I am a better writer than I was then, but some things are still beyond my reach.

1- What have you gotten most from WVU’s MFA program thus far?

Jesse Answering As Rebecca: Many, many opportunities to over-schedule myself to the point of exhaustion.

Rebecca: 3/5 Ha. Yes, although those opportunities bring real joy and life-nourishment to the point of out-weighing tiredness (mostly). This program has shown me what I value about community and continues to teach me how the practice of writing relates to the practice of living. The people I’ve met here have enriched my life, and expanded what life can hold.

Rebecca Answering as Jesse: Many, many opportunities to over-schedule myself to the point of exhaustion (I’m cheating.) [Jesse replying to Rebecca’s cheating: No fair!]

Jesse: Zero out of five! It’s totally my cool renegade department tee shirt.

2- Do you foresee a way to bring all your interests together in life down the road? Or, the big “What’s next”?

Jesse Answering As Rebecca: I’d like to teach at a smaller school in a rural but progressive area, or in an urban area—somewhere with at least as many trees as Morgantown but even more cultural opportunities. I’ll continue to write both creative nonfiction and poetry. I know that no matter where I go, Jesse will text me often to nag me about sending pieces out for publication.

Rebecca: 5/5 (And I also plan to make rainbow cupcakes for Jesse and Catherine’s wedding.)

Rebecca answering as Jesse: I’d eventually like to farm with my lovely by-then wife, our cats Coriander and Basil, and our later by-then amazing children—you know, with the likes of goats and chickens and a huge garden. I want to keep writing creative nonfiction but also study working class literature from an academic angle. In fact, I’d like to study almost everything both quantitatively and qualitatively. I’ll finally write that list-essay Rebecca’s been attempting to cajole out of me, and it’ll spark so much motivation and excitement that I’ll churn 5 or 6 memoir-style books that blend nonfiction (gardening stories interwoven with life experiences and reflections) and academic interests. I will also initiate a composting plan for the entire country.

Jesse: 4 out of 5! It makes more sense for composting plans to be worked out locally, to accommodate each area’s geographical and social quirks. Other than that, sounds about right. Also, hell yes to the cupcakes!

I also intend to nag Rebecca about sending pieces out for publication . . . heh. Aside from that, my future looks like one of those “choose your own adventure” books. My ideal next step would be into an M.A. program in American studies in Youngstown, Ohio, with a graduate certificate in working class studies. After that, who knows? A Ph.D. program? The long and arduous trek of the academic job search? A family? Full-time small-scale organic agriculture? Likely yes, yes, yes, and yes. And writing, of course. I’m reasonably certain that Ethel Morgan Smith, Kevin Oderman, Jaimy Gordon, and Rebecca will email me periodically to see how that’s going. That’s a fierce and dedicated group of people, and not one I intend to disappoint.

3- How does landscape influence your writing?

Jesse Answering As Rebecca: The overlapping landscapes of a place’s physical and emotional existence fascinate me. It’s difficult to speak of one without the other.

Rebecca: 5/5 (She’s good!). I’ve lived in Morgantown for two years now, and its steep hills and narrow, winding streets have become a kind of home to me just as the flat southern WI cornfields and open sky are. Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities is one of the books that made me want to write most.

Rebecca Answering as Jesse: I explored the woods a lot growing up and that sense of solitude and its connection to wilderness stays with me. My knowledge of plants range from what’s medicinal and what’s edible, what kinds of soil’s needed for a particular plant to thrive, etc. Landscape shows up a lot in my writing, but naturally so—I don’t make a point of it, I just feel it’s not separate from my life nor from allowing me to understand my place in it. Sometimes I feel most myself with a pen writing an essay about working with the land, and other times I feel most myself with my hands full of dirt, nourishing something to life.

Jesse: 5 out of 5, though my completely contradictory original answer below is also accurate. Yay for multiple truths!

Not as much as you’d think. In my writing, I often find myself wandering remembered landscapes, landscapes of the past that may not even exist today. Maybe the landscapes I see every day will show up in my writing ten years from now. Hard to tell.

4-What drives your writing?

Jesse Answering As Rebecca: Curiosity and compassion.

Rebecca: 5/5 (Couldn’t have put it better myself.)

Rebecca Answering as Jesse: It’s a way not only to process experiences that have shaped who I am, but a way to give those details, how I see them, to the larger world. I’d say passion and being compelled drives my work.

Jesse: Stubborn compulsion. [I stand by this answer, though Rebecca did re-frame it nicely, above, which gets her 4 and a half out of 5 on this one.]

5-How has teaching composition and/or women’s and gender’s studies affected your writing work?

Jesse Answering As Rebecca: Working with composition students in the classroom and in the writing center I have become a kinder, more effective editor of my own work, able to see and reveal the core ideas of a piece.

Rebecca: 5/5 (I feel as if I needn’t talk ever again!). I’d add that engaging with students’ writing and providing feedback feels like dancing with writing/reading on another level, and it’s an exchange I value. I value attentiveness and, having 44 students in a semester, I’m practicing how to balance attention with efficiency—letting it bloom in brevity.

Rebecca Answering as Jesse: Teaching allows me to use personal anecdotes to get students not only to relate to the work, but to think about those ideas long after they leave the room. I like to keep them in the loop as far as campus opportunities for volunteering, advocacy, and different student groups that might interest. It affects my writing in that it widens my sympathy with their struggles, and as I learn what sustains my interest I bring it in the classroom in hopes that it’ll also sustain theirs

Jesse: 2 out of 5, because Rebecca’s being an optimist. I may do all those things, but it’s mostly in the interest keeping them awake, off their phones, and facing in roughly my direction. Anything beyond that is an added bonus!

Teaching is storytelling, and students in any field are the toughest audience. From them, I’ve learned to rope in my tendency to ramble. Well, mostly.

On any given day of the school week, Jesse and Rebecca may be found typing away at their essays while a Mary Chapin Carpenter Pandora station plays in the background, grading whilst taking frequent breaks for Phase 10 and Desk Ping-Pong, sitting outside the steps of Colson discussing literature or waiting for students during office hours (one of the many purposes of the post-it-notes is to let them know when we’re on the steps, at least until the snow comes), or venting amidst laughter and watering the plants.

Thursday, September 19
Gary Fincke Reading
Time and Location: TBA

Monday, September 30
Janisse Ray Reading
Gold Ballroom, WVU Mountainlair, 7:30 p.m.

Thursday, October 3
Sarah Gerkensmeyer Q&A
130 Colson Hall, 11:00 a.m.

Thursday, October 17
Beverly Donofrio Reading
Robinson Reading Room, 7:30 p.m.

Tuesday, October 29
Hugh Blumenfeld Reading
130 Colson Hall, 10:00 a.m.

Wednesday, November 13
“Extending a Hand: Personal, Literary, Historical, and Political Perspectives on U.S. Efforts to Aid the Developing World.”
Rhododendron Room, 7:30 p.m.

Capstone Reading
TBA

Thursday, January 30
Karen Osborn Reading
Gold Ballroom, 7:30 p.m.

Thursday, February 13
Mark Brazaitis Reading
Robinson Reading Room, 7:30 p.m.

Thursday, April 17
Calliope Reading
130 Colson Hall, 7:30 p.m.

Thursday, April 24
MFA Reading
Rhododendron Room, WVU Mountainlair, 7:30 p.m.