2015 MFA in Creative Writing Faculty Spotlight: Marilyn Abildskov (Creative Non-Fiction)
Marilyn Abildskov is the author of The Men In My Country, a memoir set in Japan. Her essays and short stories have appeared recently in The Normal School, The Pinch, The Sun, AGNI, and The Laurel Review. She is a recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers' Award and Yaddo fellowships and her work has been shortlisted numerous times for the Best American Essays series.
"What are you working on now?" Something new. (Is it terrible that I don't want to say more? I'm ridiculously tongue-tied about these things.)
"What is your specialization in your genre?" I've taught many classes on the memoir and personal essay and love writers like Natalia Ginzburg and James Baldwin and Jo Ann Beard and Nick Flynn. I have also taught classes on travel writing and literary journalism and most recently, a course called "Literary Selfies," which looks at essays from Montaigne and Woolf to Didion and Kyle Minor. Somehow--I didn't plan it this way--my reading lists attract a lot of hybrid work or gray-area work (autobiographical writing published as fiction or fictionalized memoirs and the ilk) so someone observing might say my interest is blurred genre lines. In the same vein, I think of everything I study, teach, and write as saturated by memory. Can memory be my specialization?
"What do you think makes our MFA Program unique or different from other programs." We aim to create a challenging but supportive environment for our writers. Which is not to say that we find that perfect balance between the two every single minute of every single day but on the whole, there's a lot of goodwill among students even as there is, in workshops, a lot of good, solid constructive feedback (not always easy to hear). I went to Iowa and I adored absolutely everything about the program. I hope students here feel the same way.
"What do you like about teaching in our MFA Program?" I love constructing classes around whatever issues I'm thinking about--how to think about character in nonfiction, for example. Or time. (I am always thinking of time, which I believe delivers the great plot of human consciousness.) Or what conflict means when you're writing an essay as opposed to a short story. I can't stand that word conflict--who knows why--so I recently devised a class around the notion of troublemakers, which makes so much more sense to me, seems so much more organic.
"What do you tell your students about how to embark upon a 'career' --either as an artist or anything else--following your degree?" Don't worry about a career. Just sink into the writing. Whatever you're doing, whether it's waiting tables and writing or teaching college and writing, just sink in. Take your time. Do your best work. Give it as much attention as you can. You will not regret this. I keep Isak Dinesen's words close. "I write a little every day, without hope and without despair.” It's harder than it sounds.