“Mostly when I'm teaching, I am trying really hard to get out of the way of the student's own creative process. So I don't want to dictate what students make. I like to give a writing prompt that invites them to source their own material, to give them a degree of choice in how they find what they want to write about. So I trust a lot in the unconscious, that the unconscious is just going to deliver something that has value for them. Because the unconscious doesn't like to waste its time.”

In this episode, Michael V. Smith shares how he brings community-building tools into the academy and how memoir allows a writer to travel through time.

He discusses:

0:55 | the benefits of valuing process over product in writing courses

3:43 | reconciling masculinity while writing My Body Is Yours 

6:21 | the difference between the book you intend to write and the book you’ve actually written

8:38 | the impact of the slogan “silence equals death,” and how writing helps keep us alive 

13:00 | queering the academy and embodying a brave space in the classroom

16:35 | his oral history project Soundtrack and capturing lived history on a scale that is often erased 

22:03 | adapting a Lynda Barry exercise to help students build a setting and generate narrative

Guest bio:

 Michael V. Smith is a writer, performer, filmmaker, and Associate Professor teaching Creative Writing in the interdisciplinary department of Creative Studies at UBC’s Okanagan campus in Kelowna, BC. Smith is an MFA graduate from UBC’s Creative Writing program.

Smith has won a number of awards for both his writing and his short film work. His novel, Cumberland, was nominated for the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award. Smith won the inaugural Dayne Ogilvie Award for Emerging Gay Writers. He’s won a Western Magazine Award for Fiction and was nominated for the Journey Prize.

His videos have played around the world, and he has screened work at the British Film Institute, at the Lincoln Center with the New York Video Festival, and in the Vancouver International Film Festival. As a performer, Smith has played dozens of cabarets and festivals, including the 2011 Performance Studies International Conference in Utrecht, Netherlands, the Vancouver Comedy Festival, and an intervention with the Raumerweiterungshalle, Berlin.

About the Podcast:

Parallel Careers is a monthly podcast about the dual lives of writers who teach.

Few writers make their living from publication alone; many fill the gaps with teaching in both academic and community settings. Much of the work is precarious, and there are few opportunities for professional development.

Parallel Careers features writers with diverse practices and points of view—writers who are at the top of their game in both craft and pedagogy. Tune in to hear the big ideas and practical tips they take into their classrooms. Take their insights into your own class or craft.