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.