Today’s Pride Month Interview is with author and educator AW Burgess:
Hi, A.W.! I hope you’re staying safe and healthy during current events. What are you doing to stay creatively motivated in these unusual times?
What a great and terrible question, in the same way that OZ is the great and terrible. I feel like I almost need to distract your dear readers with some fanciful magic that would have them believe I’ve been muddling through just swell! The truth is, the pandemic and other issues, like what is happening with the Black Lives Matter movement, have done a toll on me, emotionally and physically. It has been very difficult to be creative. I’m not the kind of thinker or writer who does my best work in times of strife; I know that a lot of writers thrive on turmoil and uncertainty, but I find that it is when I’m most at peace that I am able to focus and to put out my best (and greatest amount) of work. That said, since my output has been low, I have increased my input. I’ve been reading a lot; fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. I’ve been finding inspiration in the bodies and voices of people on the front lines, and I’ve been trying my best to avoid social media so that I can actually and effectively take in all that is happening, all that I’m thinking about, and all that I’m feeling about it. This has always been a cycle of mine, though; a year of furious output followed by a year of immersion in others’ works. So, perhaps I’m just on that particular swing. I do have a complete draft of a novel that I need to get to work revising (beta reader feedback has begun to come in!) and I’ve been writing and submitting some poetry. I may turn my attention more to poetry in the coming year, to be honest, which is new and unsettling, but also wild. Speaking of which, I was interviewed in a 5-part series at Poetry Mini-Interviews, if anyone is interested: http://poetryminiinterviews.blogspot.com/search/label/Adam%20W.%20Burgess.
Since June is Pride Month, I have to ask: how has being gay influenced or informed your writing and blogging?
Well, being gay has turned out to be a rather important part of my academic and creative life. Much of my graduate work focused on LGBTQ history, particularly literature, and I wrote my dissertation on gay literature in the United States before Stonewall. Similarly, my creative work has been inspired by what I learned as a student, both in terms of being a student in dozens of classes where gay issues never came up, and feeling so very alone; but also in terms of my work, which very much came of those lonely experiences and the curiosity it generated. Did gay people not exist before the 1960s? Does it not matter that these writers, male, female, and other, were not heterosexual? Why do all my professors avoid these issues, these questions? I did not want to be that person, that kind of professor. And that commitment has overflowed into my creative writing, insofar as I try to write the stories that I wish I would have found when I was a kid. The ones I needed desperately, sometimes.
In 2019, you published From a Whisper to a Riot: The Gay Writers Who Crafted an American Literary Tradition, covering a period in the development of gay literature that has been under-represented in other histories. Tell us a bit about the inspiration for the book, and about your research.
Thank you for mentioning my book and for reading it. Your review was absolutely wonderful, and I’m very grateful to you for it. That book came directly out of my doctoral work mentioned above. It was an interesting journey, really. I chose a specific PhD program because the University was ranked highly for LGBT+ inclusion and because it offered a graduate certificate in LGBT Studies (which I pursued and earned). It was my time in that certificate program more than my time in the literature classroom that influenced me, really, because even in graduate courses, I was getting very little from my professors as far as diverse representation in the required reading. Ultimately, I created my own course of study, which meant I had to come up with a list of 100+ texts to read, a course to take with a faculty advisor, and then an exam based on that extensive reading and study (supplemented by my certificate program in LGBT Studies). When I managed to complete all of that, I was allowed to propose a dissertation topic. That topic? Openly gay writing by openly gay writers before Stonewall. Gay history is so long, has so much depth, but nobody knows about it. Everyone knows Stonewall. Everyone knows what has happened since Stonewall. But the reality is, so much was happening before the 1960s. Before the 1900s, even! I thought it was important to get this information collected and put out there into the world, if only so we can have a healthy rebuttal to that dismissive attitude we sometimes face, that gay/trans issues are just “too new.” They’re not. They’re a human constant.
You’re an English Professor, specializing in LGBT Studies and American Literature among other things. I’d love to hear about the process, and challenges, of developing an LGBT Studies curriculum, especially with the boom in LGBT fiction (and especially genre fiction) in the past decade or so.
Yes, it has been a blessing and a curse! You want to teach all the things, particularly when there’s such a new interest in this field. College is the time that a lot of people are coming of age, which means, for many, coming out. I want to do justice to everyone who might be in my classroom, whether they signal anything personal about themselves. One of best ways I know to do that is to diversify my reading lists in every course. A colleague recently commented, after a review of my last three years’ syllabi, that I always have more women than men on my reading lists. That’s true. And I also have writers of color, queer writers, translated writers, writers with disabilities, etc. The toughest part is still the debate about who and what to include, especially now that I know how long and rich our history is. My goal right now is to offer as much of a historical and contextual experience as I can for my students, which means regardless of the class topic, I try to include readings that cover a broad timeline, many places, and multiple perspectives. Something I hear repeatedly from students is that they have seen themselves represented for the first time in something they’ve read from my class, whether that be a text by a Latinx writer, or about a transgender experience, or a translated text from a Filipinx native. This is the most rewarding comment I can ever hope to receive, because I know how valuable it is to see ourselves represented in what we are expected to study. When a professor elevates your experience to something worthy of scholarly consideration, it is beyond validating.
What has “distance learning” looked like for you and your students over the past few months?
Fortunately, I have taught some of my courses online and in hybrid formats for many years. To be honest, though, this has been a challenge. It is not just the fact that all classes moved online, but that combined with the circumstances that required it, which have everyone feeling stressed, confused, and sometimes defeated. When we moved online mid-semester in the Spring, I did everything I could to keep my students motivated and encouraged, from allowing extra time on assignments to incorporating “mental health break” activities, like visiting a virtual zoo or going “star-gazing” online. The funny thing is, I think these challenges, these experiences, have added an entirely new and welcomed perspective to my pedagogy, things I will keep in mind and keep adapting even when (if?) we return to a more traditional environment.
You’re also a well-published essayist and book reviewer, and you’ve talked about working on short stories and a novel. So what are you working on now? Do you have anything coming out in the near future?
Ah, did I give away the game already? I have two major projects right now. The first is revising my young adult novel (it is so queer!) based on feedback from beta readers. I hope to then send that off to publishers and agents for consideration. I had received two full manuscripts on it already, but the work simply wasn’t finished. The other thing I’m working on is my poetry. Poetry is something I’ve been reading and teaching for years, but I hadn’t really tried writing much of it. But in the last year or so, it has been calling to me. The worst thing a writer can do is ignore whatever is calling to them. So, if anything comes out soon, and I hope it will, it will be either my very first novel, or some poetry. I’ll be sure to share any updates to my blog and on social media.
And finally, the usual: where can people find you and your work online?
The best place to keep up with me will be my blog, Roof Beam Reader. I have a love-hate relationship with social media, so while I do have a few accounts, my impulse is not to use them very much. Thanks so much for having me, Anthony, and happy pride!
A. W. Burgess is a southern Nevada writer whose works of fiction and non-fiction have appeared in various creative and academic publications, such as Towers Magazine, Brave Voices Magazine, America’s Emerging Writers, and Watermark Journal. Among his greatest inspirations are Kurt Vonnegut, Joan Didion, Ocean Vuong, and James Baldwin. Currently, he lives with his husband in Las Vegas, where he is an Instructor of English and a frequent explorer of Clark County’s trails, mountains, and wetlands. In 2019, Burgess began work on his first novel. More information can be found on his website, http://www.roofbeamreader.com.