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Alan Davis
Alan Davis (Fiction) is Senior Editor of New Rivers Press at Minnesota State University, which will be publishing the winners of the Stonecoast Book Prize. He is also a Professor of English at MSUM and a member of its MFA staff. Alan has published two collections of stories, Alone with the Owl and Rumors from the Lost World, which Tim O'Brien called "a magical collection of stories, one of the best I've encountered in years." He also co-edited, with Michael C. White, ten volumes of the annual anthology of American Fiction, which Writer's Digest chose in 1998 as one of the top fifteen short story publications in the country. Alan's stories, essays and reviews appear in various newspapers such as the New York Times Book Review and in literary journals such as The Hudson Review. He has received two Fulbright awards, one to Slovenia and one to Indonesia, and his writing awards include a Loft-McKnight Award of Distinction in Creative Prose and a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship. Teaching Philosophy: “There is only one thing I can do:,” Walker Percy writes in The Moviegoer, “listen to people, see how they stick themselves into the world, hand them along a ways in their dark journey and be handed along, and for good and selfish reasons.” It's a philosophy that makes good sense both for a writer and a writing teacher. Such a philosophy requires a writer to be alert to language and to character, to event and place and gesture—to all the nonverbal ways that we communicate and to the history, both personal and cultural, embodied in such gestures. It helps us see that each sentence counts. And it requires a writing teacher to be flexible. As a teacher, I try to respond both intuitively and intellectually (based on long experience as a reader, teacher, editor, and writer) by focusing in my critiques on writing practice (vision, process, revision), technique (craft issues), and completion and closure (internal consistency, editing, polishing). The writing teacher, ideally, is sometimes a coach and sometimes a collaborator. As a coach, I applaud (with check marks or marginal praise) good moves and sound craft and offer suggestions (briefly on the manuscript and more elaborately in the critique) when the story doesn't work for me. As a collaborator, I line edit manuscripts for stylistic reasons or because a story is too wordy and needs pruning or too skimpy and needs elaboration. My goal as a writing teacher is to help writers develop an “internal listener” so that the writer can hear what's working and what's not. That listener can complement critiques from our readers, those who care enough to comment on our work. Developing such an internal sense of what we're doing can help us become better at self-critiques and help us develop an aesthetic that emerges not from theory but from our practice. In the first two terms, I usually expect at least three packets of new work. One or two packets can be substantial revisions. I suggest that you begin by focusing on point of view, character development, and structure, and on the other basic elements of craft, and move towards advanced issues such as braiding together elements by creating visual and acoustical and verbal density. In the third term, the critical thesis term, I suggest three packets devoted to a thesis on a topic of interest or concern in your own writing. Other options include a publishing option, in which you might read a book about copyediting and another about working in publishing, then edit a manuscript (perhaps as a member of a “book team” at New Rivers Press) and write an essay on the process and on how working as an editor can benefit your work when you return to it. I am also open to a pedagogical option: you would read texts, practice teach if possible, and write a pedagogical-based essay. In the fourth term, when you must complete 125 “publishable” pages of a collection or a novel by the deadline, you can send me the whole thing right away so that I have a complete overview (as your first packet), and then the same material in later packets, revised and polished. The last packet is 125 pages for a line edit and final suggestions for you to accept or decline. (I'm willing to read and critique an entire novel as a first packet, and then work through 125 pages with you for the thesis.) As writers, we have complete freedom—until we formulate our first sentence. I'm interested in the process of moving forward from that first sentence through complications and complexity to closure without compromising the reality you began to create in that first sentence. Some stories require economy and lyricism, others elaboration and a long march of chapters. Learning to do either (and the kind of writing that takes your attention has something to do with both inclination and talent) takes a great deal of concentration and hard labor, of course, but it also involves “catching on”, as if a veil has been torn from our faces. At such moments, we say, “Yes! Of course. Why didn't I see that before?” If it were that easy—learn it in the mind, see it, do it—it would be too easy to be worth doing. Art is long, and life is short, but the Stonecoast experience—four terms of work, each term building on its predecessor and leading to its successor—structures that process of hard labor and catching on to make it manageable. My reading habits are eclectic. I like traditional mainstream novels and stories that are literary, experimental writing when it takes storytelling seriously even as it scrambles traditional structures, and genre writing when it has depth and breadth of character and uses language with a literary sensibility. At New Rivers Press, where I'm senior editor, I tell prospective writers that I'm interested in seeing work of every character. I would say the same to each of you and I would end by urging you, if you have any questions, to contact me, either at a residency or by email (davisa@mnstate.edu). See you in Maine. Links: ^top
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