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As a teacher of writing, it is my responsibility to combine the instruction of craft with the exploration of the fundamental questions at the heart of a liberal arts education—questions that explore what it means to be human. Although the image of the isolated artist is a strong one in our culture, I believe that writing can and should connect us to the larger world, and that it is the job of the writing workshop to assist an apprentice writer in complicating and solidifying these connections. I do this in my instruction through the teaching of a wide variety of authors—Toni Morrison, Sherman Alexie, Yasanuri Kawabata, James Baldwin, Don Delillo—but also through rigorous adherence to a process-centered approach that treats students as individuals.

Marcus Aurelius insisted that to become world citizens we must not simply amass knowledge. We must also amass within ourselves the capacity for sympathetic imagination that will enable us to comprehend the motives and choices of people different from ourselves. The practice of fiction writing within a liberal arts education is especially good at nurturing this kind of imagination because it is, by its very nature, an art form that should promote flexibility of thought. A work of fiction has the ability to situate us in the mind of another person, a character who might superficially be unlike us, and in so doing, it should blur the line between what we see as self and what we see as other. The writer and conservationist Rick Bass puts it well when he says, “Art is an engagement of the senses; arts sharpens the acuity with which emotions, and the other senses, are felt or imagined. Good fiction breathes possibility, which is to say that it also breathes a kind of diversity.”

A process-centered approach that emphasizes feedback and revision can be a powerful tool to develop not only polished stories, but students with sympathetic imaginations. For this process to work to its fullest capacity, classroom discourse has to be democratic, and each student must be encouraged to offer their own unique perspective to the group. In reacting to a discussion that reflects a plurality of opinions and backgrounds, the writer is put in a position where they must utilize important critical thinking skills. They must question and clarify their own aesthetic sense, as well as judge and assimilate a variety of approaches to their work and the work of others. Ultimately this process should hone each writer’s unique voice and empower him or her to write outside of a structured college environment.

It is my role as a teacher to shape these discussions in a manner that walks a fine line: open discourse should never be sacrificed for easy clarity, and confusion should never result from openness. It’s important that I be a strong presence in the discussion, but I see myself as much as a guide as a teacher. In the best workshops, when students are comfortable with the process, I can present the issues and then step back and watch the conversation move in different directions, pushing it here, nudging it there. In my Introduction to Fiction course, for example, I often critique two student stories in one hour and a half session; the amount of time given to the conversation allows for real depth of discussion. Connections can be made to other works the class has read that semester and various possibilities can be introduced and then discarded or adopted, depending on the value the class sees in them. We can discuss characters not only as collections of words and motivations, but also as ideas.

I profoundly enjoy teaching and I am consistently impressed by the quality of work I see from young writers. Some criticism has been leveled against the “workshop method” as producing finely polished, generic art—vacuous stories with every ‘T’ crossed—but I would have to disagree. My students consistently produce work that is unique and interesting. I feel that there is something important at stake in expressing one’s individuality, and in creating fictional people that evoke strong emotions. If we can feel sympathy for a fictional character—if we can understand them through a story—then does this allow us to understand neighbors, strangers, and so on? I think it does, and this gives my teaching a sense of urgency that renews itself each semester.

Professor David J. Crouse

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Download Curriculum Vitae PDF

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Address 731 Grubstake Road, Fairbanks AK 99712
Phone (907) 455-1286 Email davidcrouse@acsalaska.net
Education MFA, University of Alaska-Fairbanks, Fairbanks, Alaska, 1994
BA, English, Summa Cum Laude, Bradford College, Bradford, Massachusetts, 1990

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

Associate Professor of English, University of Alaska-Fairbanks, September 2009 – Present. Currently teaching undergraduate and graduate courses. Chairs extensive MFA thesis work and co-directs admission of new graduate students into the MFA Program. One year term as Chair of College of Liberal Arts Curriculum Council.

Assistant Professor of English, University of Alaska-Fairbanks, January 2007 – May 2009. Taught creative writing courses at the graduate and undergraduate level. Served on Website Committee and directed composition examinations in 2007-2008. Elected to CLA Curriculum Committee as member-at-large in March 2008.

Associate Professor of Creative Writing, Chester College of New England, September 2005-January 2007. Served as Chair of the Department of Writing and Literature. Coordinated visiting writers series, bringing several writers to campus each semester, including Andre Dubus III, Rhina Espaillat, Timothy Weed, Eric Pinder, Julia Older, and Philip Gerard. Chaired several committees responsible for hiring additional faculty.

Assistant Professor of Creative Writing, Chester College of New England, September 2001-2005. Served as Chair of the Department of Writing and Literature. Taught courses in fiction writing, publishing, creative nonfiction, and literature. Spearheaded and implemented new faculty governance system in collaboration with the President and Academic Dean. Conceived and implemented new Creative Writing Major, Photojournalism Minor, and Creative Writing Minor. Elected as Chairperson to the Faculty Affairs Committee for three successive yearlong terms. Served as Co-Chair of the college’s Self-Study Committee. Acted as Associate Editor to the college’s literary magazine, Compass Rose, and transformed it from a small Xeroxed campus magazine to a nationally distributed perfect bound literary magazine with a strong web presence.

Assistant Professor of Creative Writing, Bradford College, September 1995 - July 2000. Taught courses in Creative Writing, Technical Writing, Literature, and Freshman Composition. Awarded Professor of the Year award by faculty and students in May 2000. Designed and implemented innovative new Creative Writing curriculum. Collaborated with Creative Arts Department to offer playwriting and screenwriting workshops. Collaborated with Math and Sciences Department to offer courses in Nature and Conservation Writing. Served on Faculty Senate, Curriculum Committee, Educational Advisory Committee, Technology Committee, and Freshman Composition Committee.

EDITORIAL AND WRITING EXPERIENCE

Contributing Editor, Salamander Magazine, September 2005 – Present. Contribute short fiction and interviews for publication in the magazine. Solicit manuscripts from nationally recognized writers as contributions to the magazine.

Fiction Editor, Salamander Magazine, September 2001 – September 2005. Directed a small panel of readers and oversaw the selection and publication of fiction manuscripts. Worked in collaboration with the Associate Editor to promote the magazine.

Freelance Technical Writer, September 2000-June 2001. Conducted extensive web research and created web content. Edited online technical resources. Authored additional printed materials, including software documentation.

Director of Educational Services, Iprax Corporation, Lexington, Massachusetts, May 1995 - May 1996. Designed CD-Rom based learning programs. Conducted weeklong training workshops using multimedia software. Authored software documentation for Courseworks 3.1 and on-line tutorials for Iprax Build 3.1. Coordinated authoring of a series of high-end multimedia fire safety and OSHA certification courses.

ADMINISTRATIVE EXPERIENCE

Member-at-Large, Curriculum Committee for CLA, 2008 – Present. Reviewed and discussed all curriculum proposals for the College of Liberal Arts.

Chair, Department of Writing and Literature, September 2001 – January 2007. Developed new major and several minors, directed reading series, and coordinated a number of search committees as major grew from smallest on campus to one of the largest. Also responsible for hiring of all adjuncts in the department as well as the evaluation of all department members. Worked closely with the Academic Dean in the yearly planning of departmental budgets.

Chair, Faculty Affairs Committee, January 2002 – May 2004. Organized faculty during preparation for NEASC evaluation. Conducted various program assessments, including the Liberal Arts Core. Spearheaded key revisions in these programs.

Member of Faculty Senate, June 1999 - June 2000. Reviewed and approved curriculum materials. Discussed campus-wide issues in community forum. Authored the college's mission statement. Conducted examination and revision of College Core Program.

Director, Bradford College Reading Series, June 1998 - June 2000. Scheduled a variety of guest writers and lecturers including Robert Pinsky, Mark Doty, Jennifer Barber, Derek Walcott, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Kurt Brown, and Dean Albarelli. In 1999 conceived and authored $10,000 grant for the reading series approved by the Massachusetts Cultural Council in February 2000. Coordinated annual three-day writing conference featuring area high schools from underserved populations.

Member of Curriculum Committee, September 1998 - September 1999. Drafted and reviewed curriculum materials. Participated in the design and implementation of a new experiential learning dual curriculum. Discussed campus-wide curriculum issues.

BOOK PUBLICATIONS

The Man Back There and Other Stories. Short Story Collection, Winner of the Mary McCarthy Award for Short Fiction. Sarabande Books (August 2008).

Copy Cats, Short Story Collection, Winner of The Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. University of Georgia Press (October 2005). Copy Cats was also nominated for the Pen-Faulkner award in 2006.

MAGAZINE AND ANTHOLOGY PUBLICATIONS

Torture Me, short story, published in Salamander Magazine (Spring 2008)

Time Capsule, short story, published in Quarterly West (Spring 2007)

Dear, short story, published in Arts & Letters (Spring 2007)

Long Distance, short story, published in The Flint Hills Review (Fall 2005)

Morte Infinita, short story, published in Quarterly West (Spring 2005)

The Observable Universe, short story, published in The Beloit Fiction Journal (Spring 2005)

The Ditch, illustrated short story, published in The Book of the Dead graphic novel short story anthology, Dark Horse Publishing (Spring 2005)

Kopy Kats, short story, published in Northwest Review. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize (Fall 2004)

Interview with Carmit Delman, author of Burnt Bread and Chutney, published in Salamander Magazine (Summer 2004)

Code, short story, published in The Massachusetts Review (Spring 2004)

Click, novella, winner of Quarterly West 2002-2003 Novella Competition, published in Quarterly West (Spring 2004)

Retreat, short story, published in The Laurel Review (Spring 2004)

Still Running, short story, second place in The Richard Yates Short Fiction Contest and published in Night Train. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize (Fall 2003)

MAGAZINE AND ANTHOLOGY PUBLICATIONS – CONTINUED

Reducing Reduction: Closure in Alice Munro's Friend of My Youth and Richard Ford's Rock Springs, literary criticism, anthologized in American Literary Criticism (Fall 2003)

The Man Back There, short story, published in The Beloit Fiction Journal (Spring 2003)

The Castle on the Hill, short story, published in The Greensboro Review (Fall 2002)

Lost Dogs, short story, published in The Sonora Review (Spring 2002)

What We Own, short story, published in The Sonora Review (Fall 2001)

The Forgotten Kingdom, short story, published in The Beloit Fiction Journal (Fall 2001)

Delicate, short story, published in The Pacific Review (Spring 2001)

The Odds of That, short story, published in The Journal (Spring 2001)

Worlds Apart, short story, published in The Northwest Review (Fall 1999)

Maze, short story, published in Timber Creek Review (Spring 1999)

The Garden State, short story, published in The Greensboro Review (Spring 1999)

The Long Run, short story, published in Chelsea (Spring 1998)

Drone, short story, published in Blue Mesa Review (Fall 1998)

Life in One Room: A Study of Lodging House Living in Lawrence, Massachusetts, literary journalism published in The Cream City Review (Fall 1998)

Biography, short story, published in Poet’s Edge (Spring 1997)

Meander, short story, published in River Oak Review (Spring 1997)

Chekov’s Hammer, short literary article, published in River Oak Review (Spring 1997)

Meadhan-Oidhche, short story, published in The Windsor Review (Fall 1995)

Reducing Reduction: Closure in Alice Munro's Friend of My Youth and Richard Ford's Rock Springs, literary criticism, published in Canadian Literature (Fall 1995)

Understanding Terri, short story, published in The Louisville Review (Spring 1994)

CURRENT PROJECTS

Where Are You Now When I Need You? Collection of three novellas. Currently represented by the Jodie Rhodes Literary Agency.

Dropped. collaborative cross-disciplinary project with a visual artist.

Nomads. Collection of novellas about women in interior Alaska. Incomplete.

PROFESSIONAL AWARDS

Mary McCarthy Award for Short Fiction, 2007

Nominated, Pen-Faulner Award, Fall 2006

Nominated, Pushcart Prize, Fall 2006

Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, 2005

Nominated, Pushcart Prize, Fall 2004

Quarterly West Novella Competition, Winner, Fall 2003

Nominated, Pushcart Prize, Fall 2003

The Richard Yates Short Fiction Award, Winner, Winter 2003

Finalist, Glimmer Train Award for New Writers, Fall 2002

Massachusetts Cultural Council Fiction Award, $12,500 grant, June 2002

Finalist, Spokane Fiction Prize, June 2002

Professor of the Year, Bradford College Teaching Award, May 2000

ADDITIONAL SERVICE

Chautauqua Fiction Contest. Chautauqua Writers’ Center, Judge, 2009.

Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference, Presenter/Reader, Summer 2008

Fairbanks Arts Festival, Teacher & Presenter, Summer 2008

Fairbanks Literary Council, Organized Public Reading, May 2008

Volunteer, Writers in the Schools, North Andover High School, 2007-2008

Lawrence Freeschool Program, Lawrence Grassroots Initiative, Summer 2000

Volunteer, Haverhill Feed the Homeless Program, September 1999-September 2000

COURSES TAUGHT

University of Alaska-Fairbanks

Forms of Fiction (graduate level craft course)

Multiple Genre Graduate Writer’s Workshop

Graduate Fiction Workshop

Graduate Writers Workshop focusing on the Novella

Introduction to Creative Writing

Intermediate Creative Writing

Independent Study in Teaching Undergraduate Creative Writing

Advanced Undergraduate Creative Writing: The Art of the Novella

Creative NonFiction (undergraduate)

Technical Writing

Chester College of New England

The Art of the Novella

Advanced Fiction Writing

Introduction to Fiction Writing

Memoir, Confession, and Insight

Publishing and Editing

Speculative Writing: Science Fiction, Horror, and the Surreal
Forms of Fiction: Style and Structure

The Collaborative Novel

Bradford College

Advanced Fiction Writing Workshop

Advanced Non-Fiction Writing Workshop

Freshman Composition and Rhetoric

Introduction to Creative Writing

Style and Structure: Fiction

Genre Studies: Non-fiction, Fiction, and Poetry

Adaptive and Collaborative Writing

Memoir, Confession, and Insight

The Essay: The Self and American Culture

Genre Writing: Science Fiction and Fantasy

Technical Writing: Software Documentation

REFERENCES

Dr. Byron Petrakis, Dean of Students (former Academic Dean)
Chester College of New England
40 Chester Street
Chester, New Hampshire 03036
Phone 603- 887-7403 Email bpetrakis@chestercollege.edu

Professor Frank Soos
English Department
University of Alaska-Fairbanks, Fairbanks Alaska 99775
Phone # 907-451-9119 Email fffms@uaf.edu

Dr. Robert Smart, Ph.D.
Chair of the Writing Program
Quinnipiac College
5 Red Yellow Road
Middletown, Connecticut 06457
Phone # 860-346-7117 Email Robert.Smart@quinnipiac.edu

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PERMAFROST: Your first two books are story collections. What has drawn you to the short form over longer projects like a novel? Building on that, what does a short story owe its reader?

DAVID CROUSE: I’ve always enjoyed reading short stories, so I think most of it has to do with my fundamental love of the form and the writers who are good at the form—Alice Munro, Raymond Carver, John Cheever, Borges, Grace Paley, Kafka. Many of these writers devoted—or are devoting in the case of Munro—most of their creative energy to the short story, and they’ve produced work as lasting and powerful as any novelist.

And I would argue that many other contemporary writers—Mary Gaitskill, Sherman Alexie, Richard Ford—have produced their best stuff while working in the form of the short story. Their publishers would probably not like to hear that, of course, but that’s how I see it.

There are the usual observations about the form being good for writers and readers with short attention spans, but I think I’m especially attracted to it because of its possibilities. A writer can do pretty incredible things within the boundaries of the form. Just consider the varied styles of the writers I’ve already mentioned. And I don’t necessarily believe that readers with short attention spans are necessarily attracted to the form—readers who like to read closely and carefully, they’re the people who are probably most into the short story.

What does the short story owe the reader? That’s a good question. I know what I want my stories to do. I want them to immerse the reader in a foreign consciousness to the extent that they feel that consciousness deeply and empathetically. I use the word empathy rather than sympathy because sympathy has become a dirty word for me; characters don’t have to be sympathetic in my mind, in that they don’t have to have all their jagged edges removed. They can have deep faults and awful thoughts, just like we all do, and it’s the reader’s responsibility—because it’s a two way street, of course—to extend themselves into the lives of this other person and suspend reductive judgments.

My obligation—and I suppose one of the obligations of the form—is to help the reader get to that place where they experience that other personality in all its troubling complexity. Obviously there are many writers who don’t do this in a traditional manner—Barthelme, Borges—but even in their work I find myself involved with a single, unique self, a distinctive otherness that I have to accommodate and understand.

This is a very general answer, I know, but I think that points to the variety of the form. I know what I personally owe the reader, what I’ve outlined as my own personal artistic responsibilities, but that might be something very different than another short story writer. Which is a good thing.

P: In Copy Cats, about half of the stories are in first person, whereas in The Man Back There only two—or we could say three—are in first person. And yet all of these stories are alive with voice in a way that often requires a first person narrator. Can you talk about how you choose what point of view to use for your stories? How have you been able to get at the voice of the characters through your third person narrators?

DC: I try to use a close third that accommodates the language and thought patterns of the protagonist, at least when the story is occurring in scene, and it’s actually one of my preferred styles lately, because I can move in very close to the character but also take small steps back when necessary. I don’t know if choosing point-of-view is very deliberate for me—in some cases, yes, but most often it’s much more instinctive, and the story rises out of and is shaped by that choice.

I want to show a character not just through his or her actions but through an internal life that informs and often contradicts the external. That’s where that voice really comes in. So much of it involves the inner life of the person I’m writing about.

P: While we’re on the subject of point of view, I have to ask about “Show & Tell.” Why second person? And why does it work so surprisingly well in this particular story?

DC: Thanks for the compliment on that piece. I think of that story as an open letter written by an older man to his childhood self, so hopefully part of why it works is because the use of the point-of-view is justified by the revelation at the end—the idea that this story is about two versions of the same person. Also, I tried very hard to make the images in the story as concrete as possible. If the reader initially balks at the experimental style, then hopefully the images, the “groundedness” of the story, pulls him or her into the narrative.

P: With both Copy Cats and The Man Back There, the titles of the collections have a dynamic relationship with each of the stories and help to shed thematic light on how the stories link with each other. How important are titles in your work? I’m also interested in the title change from “Kopy Kats,” the story title, to Copy Cats, the title of the entire collection.

DC: I’ll take the last part of the question first. To some extent the entire collection Copy Cats is about inauthentic, “copied” experience. The collection is full of people who fabricate their own lives by emulating someone else’s identity. So I liked the idea of the disconnect in the two spellings. One echoes but doesn’t match the other—the correspondence is off, just as it is in many of the relationships in the stories. Hopefully a nice metaphor for the collection as a whole.

I want my collections to have strong thematic elements. The stories should function as a grouping of similar pieces. Which is not to say that I don’t love collections that don’t do this—there’s something to be said for just putting ten great stories together, with no other link beyond the fact that they’re great stories—but that’s not really how I think when I’m putting a book together. So for me the title of the collection should resonate in interesting ways for the reader—in a way that’s helpful to thinking of the stories as a whole, but is still lets the mystery of the collection stand.

P: Does this idea of the collection as a whole occur while you’re writing? Before? Or only after you have a whole bunch of stories put together? When does the book become a book in your mind, and not just random stories?

DC: It occurs after most of the stories are written. Maybe I’ll write a new one specifically to approach some of the themes from a new direction, but even in that case it usually involves taking an old idea and revisiting it. It becomes a book when I can cluster the stories together in a way that the combination says something interesting back to me. But the catalyst is mostly pragmatic. A story contest. That kind of thing.

P: “Kopy Kats” and “The Man Back There” are each the title story as well as the first story in their respective collections. I also feel—though this is arguable—that the darkest story in each collection is the final story. Can you talk a little bit about how you arrange your story collections?

DC: In both collections I’ve put a more direct, succinct story up front—but also one that lays out some of the themes of the other stories to come in a nice way. I know people don’t necessarily read collections of stories or poems in order, but I still want to have a design in mind when I think of the stories as a collection. This involves some different questions. How does one story speak to the story that follows or precedes it? Do two stories speak to each other in too direct a manner, or are they too similar in terms of characters or subject matter to be placed in close conjunction to one another? Does the collection end on a strong note? Given that I’m writing thematically related collections, these questions become even more important, I think.

It’s interesting because we sort of live in the age of the mix. People can make their own collections of songs by downloading things from iTunes. And I would love, for instance, if the publishing world looked to this model for inspiration in how they present work. Wouldn’t it be interesting to assemble your own twelve story “greatest hits” collection of stories by Yasunari Kawabata or James Baldwin, in whatever order you chose? But while this trend is interesting and exciting, it also creates a counter trend. Vinyl albums with distinct beginnings and ends become prized by the same people downloading songs from the internet, for instance. So hopefully the people who flip through the book and read the last story first also find satisfaction in knowing that I have a plan in mind—even when that plan is subverted.

As for your last point: in The Man Back There I made a definite decision to end the collection with the darkest story. I’m not sure exactly why, except that I thought the story took some risks and because I liked the last paragraph and felt it had something to say about the collection as a whole.

P: Are you familiar with the writer David Leavitt? In the introduction to his Collected Stories, he says that he learned how to order a group of short stories into a coherent whole by looking at record albums, particularly Joni Mitchell’s. Thoughts? Any particularly well-ordered albums that come to mind?

DC: Interesting question. How about Bringing It All Back Home by Bob Dylan, or Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On? or Entertainment! by the English punk rock group Gang of Four. Sgt. Pepper’ Lonely Hearts Club Band, of course, right? There are so many.

P: Getting back to dark stories, Copy Cats won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, a prize typically associated with works containing dark content. What attracts you to writing about these elements of contemporary life, the things that carry a certain weightiness?

DC: I’m not sure, to be honest. To some extent I think a writer’s subject finds the writer, not the other way around. I can control what I do with my obsessions—how I write about them—but why I have these particular obsessions, I don’t know if I have a lot of say in the matter, or even an insight on the subject that would be illuminating and interesting.

As a reader, I do know that I’m attracted to stories with weight, that demand a lot from me in terms of my emotional response. If I sit down to read a short story in the morning I want it to change my afternoon.

P: Both your collections have similar themes and yet Copy Cats takes a much more youthful perspective on the issue of identity while The Man Back There is much more from an adult perspective. Do you feel that what you are interested in writing about changes as you grow older? Do these stories reflect your own changing view of the world?

DC: I think I wanted The Man Back There to have a more retrospective quality to it, so yes, that meant writing about older people. And even the younger people in that collection, like Denny in “The Forgotten Kingdom,” are doing a lot of retrospective thinking. The stories in Copy Cats come out of a very intense, concentrated writing process and most of them probably reflect that. There’s more immediacy to them, I guess, a little more forward energy.

I’m not sure if that reflects a changing viewing of the world though. Maybe I’ll know after five or six books, but right now it might be too soon to tell. Hopefully I’m not getting sentimental.

P: In addition to writing, you’ve also worked (and continue to work) with other art forms, like music and film and graphic arts. Can you talk a little bit about how you see other media or forms influencing your own writing? How important is working with other forms in one’s development as a writer?

DC: I’ve found that I really, really need to work artistically in other areas to stay fresh in my prose writing. And to stop myself from getting bored. It’s very helpful because I’m not very good at a lot of these secondary artistic interests (like music) and the stakes are lower. I can be a klutz and just enjoy myself and I think that helps me from being too serious, too precious, about my writing as well. One feeds into another.

Developing secondary artistic interests is something I would recommend for all writers. At the very least it exposes you to another way of seeing the world, and this sharpens your senses when writing. Jazz music has helped me immeasurably in thinking about structure, for instance. That might sound pretentious but it’s very true.

P: So they’re not completely separate? You find them bleeding into each other? Does your interest in film or graphic narrative or music alter the way you look at a story?

DC: I think music and film help writers think structurally. With the exception of composers like Ornette Coleman and such, both music and film generally have more delineated structures than prose fiction. Having an awareness of these structures has really helped me look more deeply into questions of structure in my own work. Graphic narratives have helped me think of how dialogue and visuals work together. In comic books these two elements are clearly separate, and because of that there can be immediate dissonance between the two elements—between the text and images you’re looking at simultaneously. That’s a lesson I’ve tried to integrate in the way I handle dialogue and the visual elements of a scene—setting and action and all that.

That’s just a couple of examples, but there are many more.

P: You’re both a writer and a teacher, and I’m curious how you see these two things meeting. Does your teaching inform your writing somehow? Are you drawn to students at a certain stage of their writing careers? What are your theories on the teaching of creative writing?

DC: I’m very lucky to have the opportunity to teach creative writing, because it means that I’m part of a community of writers who are constantly sharing their work and talking about writing. If you strike the correct balance in your life—if your responsibility to your students and to your own writing are felt in the right proportion—that can be a wonderful thing for your own creative process. Often I’ve figured out an issue with one of my own stories while critiquing a student story. And it works the other way too—often what I’m working on in a particular story can then carry over into the classroom, and I find new ways to assist students in their own work, new approaches or ideas that communicate directly to what the student writer might be experiencing.

I think I’m drawn to students of all ages and experience. I love teaching graduate students, of course, but there’s something incredibly exciting about teaching an introductory fiction course. The innocence can be contagious, for one thing, and inexperienced students can sometimes produce amazing and distinct work. Surprising things can and should happen in a class like that.

I have all sorts of theories about what the creative writing classroom should and shouldn’t do. I could probably go on and on about it. But I’ll just say one thing about it and leave it at that. The creative writing classroom should make its members want to write. Sometimes we get so caught up in other important things that we forget that.

P: Can you tell us anything about your current project(s)?

DC: I’m just finishing up a draft of three novellas tentatively entitled Where Are You Now When I Need You? I’ve written them pretty quickly so I think I’m going to leave them alone for a while and see if I can take a more objective approach to one last revision after a couple of months. I’m very happy with them right now, but that’s a feeling that’s always subject to change. I’m always playing around with a short story or two as well, but right now I don’t really have any plans for another collection of short fiction.

But every time I’m asked one of these questions I find myself sitting at my desk the next week doing the exact opposite of what I said I was doing in the interview, so who knows? If that pattern remains I’ll probably be working on a short story collection by this weekend.

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