10 Writing Identity

Like a retired snowbird, I split my time between two homes: Composition Studies and Creative Writing.  But unlike those who head to Phoenix when the snow flies and stay put until the thaw, I shuttle back and forth. All my scholarly writing is creative; in revising poems and essays, I benefit from scholarship about the writing process. And no matter what form my work takes, I explore questions related to writing and identity. I am always working on some kind of project—revising a piece of creative nonfiction while doing research for a new article, for instance—and this work feeds me intellectually and sparks new ideas for teaching. Below I offer highlights; see my CV for complete list of scholarly articles and conference papers.

Asking Fundamental Questions About Writing and Identity: Scholarship

I typically write about teacher identity, student identity, and the ways that teachers read student writing. Immediately post-tenure, I completed two articles about authority construction and Writing Program administration (see “Unlearning” and “Redefining”), both written from a feminist perspective. I then returned to my qualitative researcher roots, studying writers within Gustavus classrooms (see “‘You are a Reader,'” “Assumptions” and “Complicating Containment”).  I use interviews with students, surveys, classroom observations, and close readings of student-authored texts regularly. I published  “‘Unlearning ‘Habits, Customs, and Character’: Changing the Ethos of Our Writing Center,” in the April, 2010 issue of Writing Lab Newsletter (now retitled WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship), one of the most widely read publications in my field.^[1] The essay describes the partnership between our Writing Center and the Gustavus Diversity Center.

I am most invested in writing about classroom relationships. For instance, “You are a Reader and That’s What I Need” was the lead essay in a special issue of Reader: Essays in Reader-Oriented Theory, Criticism, and Pedagogy devoted to the small college context (2012).  I argue that writing teachers at small liberal arts colleges may be expected to achieve a level of intimacy with students, especially those students that are members of the majority culture. “Assumptions, Theories, and Best Guesses” (2015) analyzes the ways in which a culturally and racially diverse group of beginning writers construct their teachers as readers. I argue that students invent a composite figure of the teacher-reader, gleaned from all their experiences as student writers. I presented this research at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in Atlanta, Georgia in 2011. Finally, my most recent work on the revision experiences of multilingual students considers the socio-cultural and rhetorical benefits of the “Why Multi Matters” course. My article, “Complicating Containment,” has just been accepted by the WAC Journal.  I presented findings at national conferences, including meetings of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) and Small Liberal Arts College WPA Consortium (SLAC), and I did so at Macalester College in spring, 2016. I’ve also shared this research via “Teachers Talking” sessions and a January GAC WAC workshop here at Gustavus. The publications mentioned above and dozens of campus presentations on writing pedagogy establish my record of professional activity. But they represent only one side of my identity as a writer.

Asking Fundamental Questions about Writing and Identity: Poems and Essays

In summer of 2014, I sat beneath a tent at a street festival in Marshall, Minnesota representing their Read Local program with my chapbook, Chasing Northern Lights. Back in 1988, an unfortunate experience with a sarcastic, ironic hipster of a creative writing professor had scared me silent. I didn’t write poems again for nearly 20 years. I published Chasing Northern Lights in 2012, and I am now enjoying the soul-crushing experience of submitting my first full length manuscript of poems, What’s Merely There to be Noticed, to regional and national independent presses. This collection considers how we use domestic experience to make sense of our lives. I have also placed essays and poems in journals including Full Grown People, Compose, Mud Season Review, Water~Stone Review, Mankato Magazine, Naugatuck River Review, and Paper Darts. I was an Honorable Mention in the Loft Literary Center’s Mentor Series Competition in Poetry in 2010-11, and a finalist in both 2012-13 and 2014-15. One highlight of my writing career came via comments from my former colleague, the late John Rezmerski. In an interview with the Mankato Free Press, Rez referred to my poem “Jesus Goes to the Dentist” as one of the “shining pieces” in his edited volume, County Lines.^[2] In selecting two of my poems for that book, Rez affirmed my decision to pursue creative writing in earnest. As a result, there is always a new writing project on my desktop, and my colleagues invite me to read at events including our Fall Classic, Bards in the Arb, and Word Play.

Those public readings are, in a way, a performance of the self. But while only some of my poems are autobiographical, when I write creative nonfiction, I quite literally construct a self on the page. The essays I write are true. That puts me in a vulnerable place—it’s a little like Discovery Channel’s “Naked and Afraid,” the horrifying reality show in which two daring and typically overconfident contestants, one male, one female, must survive life on a remote island buck naked. We viewers sit in slack-jawed amazement as they expose their vulnerabilities. The first time I published an essay, I felt that exposed. In “Gangsters, Doctors, Nurses, and the Professor,” which appeared in Full Grown People, I acknowledge the importance of watching “General Hospital” at particularly challenging times in my life. Another essay, “Here There Be Snakes,” uses the story of a hiking trip to Minneopa Falls to interrogate the challenges of blending a family. While these narratives may build bridges to readers who don’t share my experiences, they certainly reach the ones that do, helping them feel less alone. That’s worth any discomfort I get from making myself that vulnerable.

About a month ago, my oldest son’s girlfriend read my most recent essay, “Bring Out Your Dead,” in Mud Season Review. The piece includes some painful details from my experience growing up with a mentally ill parent.

“Tell your mom I’m sorry,” she told my son.  “And that this explains a lot.”