Q: How did you end up in Bloomsburg?
C: So, the way that it works when you’re an English professor: the year that you get of out graduate school, you go to the MLA Conference. A whole bunch of schools come to the MLA Conference and are looking for professors, and a whole bunch of people just out of graduate school go to that conference. I had interviews with a lot of schools, but Bloomsburg and another one were the only two that offered me jobs -- and this was a better job. One of the things I always tell people if they want to be professors [is that] you don’t have a choice of where you want to live in the country. And that’s something that a lot of people are like, “Oh, you’re a professor, you’re here!” but, you know, there’s not that many jobs for English professors.
Q: Where did you graduate from?
C: [For my] undergrad, I went to Pomona College in Los Angeles, California. For my Master’s Degree, I did a MFA in fiction from the University of Utah, and then I did my PhD at the University of Houston.
Q: What kinds of publications have you written for?
C: Well, really, my job is as a creative writer, so I don’t publish a lot of scholarly essays, but I do go to a lot of conferences where I talk about pedagogy, which is the study of teaching. That’s where a lot of my scholarship is -- in terms of how to teach people things. And then, in terms of publications, I think, like everyone working in creative writing, I have a super eclectic group of publications. Like, I just got an essay published in an environmental journal out of Oxford University Press, which is kind of interesting. But then, I also publish little short things online. I was on this website called Lunchticket for this super short -- was it nonfiction or fiction? Oh, it was fiction, it was a short story kind of thing. So, pretty much the range. I adore writing what is either like a short fiction or nonfiction piece or a prose poem, and the distinctions between the two of them [grow] very difficult.
Q: How long have you taught here at Bloomsburg?
C: This is my nineteenth year. So, forever. [laughs] Seriously -- this was my first teaching job. A lot of people move, but I stayed. I think I liked a lot about the location, and I really liked our student body. I felt like if I was teaching at some sort of super fancy private school, I would be teaching people who didn’t need me, you know, who already knew what I had to teach them, basically. But here, I just feel like Bloomsburg is an absolute game changer for some people, and I love that. I love being part of that.
Q: What classes do you usually teach?
C: Well, I teach two sections of Freshmen Writing -- or First-year writing, I suppose, is what we call it now. I teach those, and sometimes I teach Honors and sometimes I don’t. And then, I teach the range of creative writing classes except for poetry, because I am not a poetry expert. But I could teach almost everything else.
Q: Are you involved in any organizations?
C: I am the advisor for HOPE, which is Help Our Planet and Earth. It’s an environmental organization. I think that’s all that am an advisor for right now. We had, on campus for a long time, a Green Campus Initiative, which I was the chair of, but it does less than it used to. I’m a big environmentalist, in case you can’t tell. It’s one of my passions.
Q: What are your favorite books, shows, or genres?
C: Really, what I absolutely adore is a particular genre, which is graphic novels. I am a huge fiend for graphic novels, and I teach a graphic novels class. I teach a Lit and Society class that is graphic novel [oriented]. A lot of that is because I do visual art as well, and I really love the combination of art and words on the page. I just -- I am in love with that. I almost went to school for visual art, and my mom said that it wasn’t practical, which I thought was absolutely hilarious… so I went and got a history degree, and that’s wasn’t practical either! It has nothing to do with what I’m doing now. So ha. [laughs] Take that, mom!
Q: If you could create a new class to teach, what would it be?
C: It’s definitely going to come off like my last question -- well, there’s two things, actually, that I would do. The first would be a graphic novel class where we actually created a graphic novel, and so I would want to partner with somebody in Art -- like, over in Art, Sue O’Donnell, who does graphic design stuff? I adore her; if our schedules ever allowed us to team-teach a class, to do something with graphic design or something that was like that, I would live to do that.
But, the other thing that I’m interested in which might be more realistic: I really, really love political fiction, and so I would love to teach a class -- and I don’t mean overt political fiction, but I would love to teach a class with ‘issues,’ you know, where the fiction is talking about issues. So it could be something like a dystopian world that comments on our world, or it could be something that’s about a refugee experience or something like that.
Q: What is the best advice someone has ever given you about English?
C: I think this is advice that I give you guys [in class] often, especially when you’re all really stressed, but -- so I was really stressed about finishing my dissertation for my PhD, and my dissertation mentor said this thing: “How do you eat an elephant?” And the answer is: “One bite at a time.” I think that a lot of people get a lot of anxiety when they’re starting a piece and that’s what keeps them from starting. Even for me, sometimes I’ll be like, “Ohmygosh I haven’t published anything in a while! I’m really stressed out; I have to write this!” And then I won’t even get started. So, you write the first sentence. And then you write the second sentence.
Q: What would be the title of a book about you?
C: The title of the book about me would be Best Dinner Ever. The reason for that is that’s what my family says about me all the time, that I’m ridiculously excited by small things. Like, my husband will make me -- like, he made this really good spicy shrimp thing with cucumbers and miso dressing and avocados, and it was crunchy, and I was sitting on the couch going, “It’s the best dinner ever!!” And he says, “You say that for every dinner.” [laughs] And I think that’s kind of true of me, you know; I’m someone who’s really super happy with the small stuff, and I would love to somehow write a book about that, to show other people that all the huge political stuff that’s going on or all the stress you have about school or all the things going on with your families -- there’s a way to just be happy with the fact the little pockets of good things. Like, I really like my blue scarf. Or, like, this is the ring that I bought myself for being brave for going knocking on doors for the Democrats for the vote. Just -- tiny little things like that. I live on those.
Q: What would you like to see for the English Department?
C: I can’t speak too much to the whole English department, because Creative Writing -- well, we’re definitely a part of it, but we’re a little bit separate. Like I said before, one of the things I’d really like to see is more collaboration with [the Art Department]. I would love to see us working with art, and we already have Professor Wemple, who does the Living and Learning Community, which is like the ArtSpace one. I’d like to see that sort of keep carrying on. For the English Department as a whole… I’d like to see us be able to hire more young people. I feel like we’re all getting a little long in the tooth, and we could use some news from the outside. I also would really like to see us be able to teach more diverse literatures, to have specific classes that are in diverse and contemporary literature. I feel that we do an absolutely fabulous job with what’s been written in the past, but I’d like to see us talk more about what’s contemporary. I do feel like we’re getting there; in the Short Story class -- well, it’s not all contemporary, but a majority of it is. And I’m super enjoying that.
Extra: If you're interested in reading the short piece Dr. Lawrence mentioned in the interview above, you can check it out here!
Thanks for the interview, Dr. Lawrence!
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