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L Iterary R Eferen Ce SPRINGSPRING 2015 2015 Program Welcomes New Fiction Faculty Interview with Marjorie Celona by Allison Donohue, 1st-year poetry MFA n Fall 2015, the Creative Writing Pro- gram welcomed Marjorie Celona as a member of the fiction faculty. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Work- Ishop, Marjorie’s debut novel Y was pub- lished in 2013. The Program featured Mar- jorie as the first reader in the annual read- ing series. ~ Allison Donohue: First off, as the most recent addition to the MFA faculty as Assistant Professor of Fiction, Wel- come! This past fall you read from your debut novel, Y. The novel begins with the lines, “My life begins at the Y. I am born and left in front of the glass doors, and even though the sign is flipped ‘Closed,’ a man is waiting in the parking lot and he Maritime island maybe—and had to cross sees it all: my mother, a woman in navy a treacherous channel on a small ferry in coveralls, emerges from behind Christ the middle of winter in a rattletrap car, his Church Cathedral with a bundle wrapped mother practically bursting. The conceit— in gray, her body bent in the cold wet that “impossible” omniscient voice—isn’t wind of the summer morning.” any different from what Truman Capote The first chapter continues as the did in In Cold Blood, or what countless oth- speaker tells the story of her own birth. er omniscient first-person narrators in fic- How did you decide to begin your novel with such an interesting and arresting tion have done, ex- point of view? cept that in this case the writer was telling Marjorie Celona: Years ago, I attended a the story of his own reading in which the writer told the true birth. It stuck with story of his parents’ fraught journey to the hospital where he would later be born. New Fiction— They lived somewhere remote—some Cont’d page 2 crwr.uoregon.eduLiterary Reference CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM 1 New Fiction Literary me. Reference I wrote Y in chapters that alter- _______________________ nate between first- and third- FACULTY person—though the whole thing could be said to be written in the Fiction first-person omniscient. The narra- Jason Brown tor—abandoned at birth at the Marjorie Celona YMCA and raised in foster care—has and pieced the story of herself together, Karen Thompson Walker, like a detective assembling clues, Visiting Writer and thus she takes ownership not only of her own story but also of the Poetry stories of her family members, real Garrett Hongo and imagined, and of the story of her Daniel Anderson birth and later abandonment. The Geri Doran duality of the point view felt like the and right vehicle for expressing the tex- Lisa Fay Coutley, tuality of identity itself, as well as Visiting Poet the duality of Shannon’s character— androgynous, asexual, not a person Instructors who can be easily categorized. The between the writer and her charac- Ezra Carlsen book is a performance piece of iden- ters. Dissatisfied by the story, we ask Nicola Fucigna tity in a lot of ways—a literal break- the writer for interiority—that is, ac- cess to a character’s interior reality. Otis Haschemeyer down of the “self.” (The other, possibly more honest An alternative to interiority is to Brian Trapp answer is that I got sick of the limita- assert narrative control through _______________________ tions of first person. The “I” key on physicality. It means getting closer, ADMIN STAFF my laptop stopped working halfway point-of-view wise, to the character, through the first draft—I took that as until writing becomes an act of em- George E. Rowe editorial comment.) bodiment. “[Flaubert] sometimes Program Director found himself weeping as he wrote,” AD: Some of the MFA fiction writes Lydia Davis in her introduc- writers have spoken about your use Julia A. Schewanick tion to her translation of Madame Business Manager of the term "interiority." Could you talk a little bit about what this Bovary, “. he so identified with Allison Donohue means and how it has influenced Emma during her last days that he Special Projects GTF your own writing? was physically ill.” The portrayal of consciousness is _______________________ MC: I’m usually railing against one of the central things realism is it! Interiority is a catch-all term that Creative Writing Program concerned with. How do we portray 5243 University of Oregon we use when we don’t understand thought? Not through the transcrip- Eugene, OR 97403-5243 what’s happening in a character’s tion of thought, but rather through T: (541) 346-3944 mind. Typically, this dissatisfaction the body and what it notices. Thus: F: (541) 346-0537 arises because there is a disconnect. what are the physical sensations that E: [email protected] There is too much space either be- the character is experiencing in the http://crwr.uoregon.edu tween the writer and the reader, or moment; what does the character 2 UNIVERSITY OF OREGON COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Spring 2016 New Fiction Faculty News see, hear, taste. When you can write this close to a Marjorie Celona character without thinking about it, you are ap- Assistant Professor of Fiction proaching something that resembles true interiority. And the need for descriptions of feelings disappears. Celona gave readings in Our thoughts will always fail us. So, we continue to Eugene and Portland, and look for better ways to portray consciousness—to finished a second draft of her portray a “realer” interior reality. The body is one novel. A dramatic reading of the solution. French translation of Marjorie’s first AD: Some writers talk of having novel, Y, was performed in Paris by actress Valérie “preoccupations” or certain ideas that continue to Bezançon for the 32nd ASSISES DE LA TRADUC- haunt them. Are there stories—or ideas—that you TION LITTÉRAIRE. find yourself continually returning to, writing about again and again? And, conversely, are there stories (or novels) that have been placed in the Garrett Hongo "graveyard," so to speak, that you imagine you will Professor of Poetry never return to? Hongo's book, The Mirror Dia- MC: The single-parent/only-child relationship ry: Selected Essays, has been was the preoccupation of my twenties. I’m more in- accepted for publication by the terested in the ripple effect of guilt right now. I don’t University of Michigan Press for think I have anything in the “graveyard,” to borrow their Poets on Poetry series and your term—the things that troubled me years ago scheduled for publication in spring 2017. His poem, still trouble me, and I have found no answers to any- "I Got Heaven," was selected for Best American Poetry thing, only deeper, weirder questions. There is one 2016. He gave two panel talks at the AWP Conven- story that I’ve been noodling with for a decade and I tion in Los Angeles: "Concentration Camps, USA" opened the document this afternoon to see if I could and "Poetry Los Angeles" and was a final judge in finally finish it. (It continues to elude me.) What’s it the Hopwood Creative Writing Contests at the Uni- about? Some guy and his brother. The way families versity of Michigan. In addition, he wrote the Intro- form factions. The way there are things you can’t talk duction to Liviticus, a new volume of poetry by Car- about and how everyone sort of understands that. ibbean poet Kamau Brathwaite. This summer he will Later on in life, I’d like to write more about gender— be Writer-in-Residence at the Lucas Artists Residen- it was part of Y, but somewhat tangential. I’d like to cies at Villa Montalvo Art Center. write more about geomagnetic storms. AD: Your short stories have appeared in the Harvard Review, Best American Nonrequired Read- Staff News ing, The Sunday Times, and elsewhere. Yet you chose to write and publish a novel for your debut Julia Schewanick literary work rather than a collection of short sto- Business Manager ries. How did you decide this? MC: I didn’t! My agent did. She said it was im- Joining the Creative Writing portant that I begin my career with a novel. This was Program in Spring 2006, Julia crushing to hear at the time—I didn’t have a word of celebrates 10 years of manag- a novel written. What I’ve come to accept since writ- ing the day-to-day operations of ing one is that the novel and the short story couldn’t the program. Congratulations! New Fiction— Cont’d page 14 crwr.uoregon.edu CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM 3 Karen Thompson Walker Visiting Assistant Professor of Fiction Winter – Spring 2016 alker’s first book, The Age of Miracles, was ments. As a reader and a W published in 2013 and is a New York Times writer, my ideal book is one Bestseller. She holds degrees from UCLA and Co- in which every sentence is lumbia. She is the recipient of the 2011 Sirenland Fel- doing at least two kinds of lowship as well as a Bomb Magazine fiction prize. A work: moving the story forward and also offering former book editor at Simon & Schuster, Walker is some sort of poetry. from San Diego. AD: Could you talk about your novel in pro- _______________________________________________ gress, what it's about and where the inspiration came from for this work? Interview by Allison Donohue, 1st-year poetry MFA KTW: I feel a little superstitious about saying very much about my novel in progress—as if some- Allison Donohue: While writing The Age of Mir- how I’ll lose the thread if I try to describe it in any acles, you worked full time, snatching moments detail—but it’s about a mysterious contagious dis- before work and on the subway to write.
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