Title and department: Professor of English, Director of the Creative Writing Program
Hometown: Washington, DC
Educational/professional background: MFA, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor; professorships or visiting professorships at the University of Oregon, Purdue University and the University of San Francisco
How did you get into your field of research?
I began my career as a journalist, but during off hours while working on the night city desk at the Washington PostI started a novel. That book, which I finished in graduate school, became my first publication, a novel called The Obituary Writer.
Could you please describe your area of focus?
I write and teach fiction, mostly short stories and novels, though I occasionally teach nonfiction writing and multimedia storytelling as well.
What main issue do you address or problem do you seek to solve in your work?
Each of my four novels and the one I’m currently working on has been set in a different place and has addressed different issues, but what seems to hold the books together is an effort to understand why even the most well-intentioned people have an irrepressible urge to control others, often by making promises they can’t keep or creating mythologies that will inevitably be exposed as such.
What attracted you to UW-Madison?
I wanted to be part of the UW-Madison Creative Writing program, which is one of the best and most unique in the country, and I was eager to return to a research university of the caliber of the University of Michigan, where I did my graduate work.
What was your first visit to campus like?
My first visit to campus was on a bicycle 25 years ago. I’d ridden with my brother from the west coast of Washington State, and I would end up on the east coast of Massachusetts. A friend we were staying with brought us to Der Rathskeller and we spent a summer evening nursing beers on the Union Terrace thinking how lucky UW students were to have this place and this view of the world.
What’s one thing you hope students who take a class with you will come away with?
I hope to teach them as much I can about the craft and mechanics of good fiction writing, but without compromising that sense of wonder all lovers of literature have when swept up in a great book.
Do you feel your work relates in any way to the Wisconsin Idea? If so, please describe how.
Fiction is the art of human empathy. Readers connect with another consciousness — the writer’s, the narrator’s — and this creates a bridge between people, experiences and beliefs. At the heart of the Wisconsin Idea is a similar impulse: to expand beyond the self into the broader community, to share ideas and forge connections between people.
What’s something interesting about your area of expertise you can share that will make us sound smarter at parties?
This quote from former UW-Madison student and Nobel Laureate in Literature Saul Bellow: “A writer is a reader moved to emulation.”
What are you looking forward to doing or experiencing in Madison?
I’ve never been cross-country skiing. Rumor has it there’s a winter that will give me ample opportunity.
Hobbies/other interests:
Pickup basketball and long, aimless walks with a podcast in my ears.