Faculty and Visiting Faculty

 

bobby crace

Lecturer, Creative Writing
Bobby Crace is a writer, teacher, and editor in New York City. He teaches at Stony Brook University and ghostwrites for Kevin Anderson & Associates. His primary work is in fiction: long form, short stories, and flash; as well as Creative Nonfiction: memoir and the experimental. He has published in Routledge, The Under Review, The Southampton Review, Mayday, Bubble Lit, and Punk Noir Lit.

FACULTY INTERVIEW:

What genre(s) do you write in?

Fiction and creative nonfiction.

What is the thing that excites you about the act of writing?

Discovery. We get to discover ourselves. We get to discover the world. We get to discover levels of ourselves that we are not aware of in our conscious mind. 

Also, agency. Writing can be the practice of agency. So can reading. So can interacting with any art. You can learn who you are and what choices you may have in a world where that information is often constricted or oppressed. That excites me.

Do you feel like your work is in conversation with other writers or work? If so,
who/what?

I am interested in the elasticity of family dynamics and connections. That's where my brain starts to work, and Toni Morrison has always had  a large impact on me in that way. The way she approaches every narrative, description, and relational dynamic, you could read her books hundreds of times over and discover new things in each paragraph each time. It’s inspirational. 

More broadly, I like weird writers that can create weird tones. I like living in inventive and strange spaces. I like being able to create that, especially in flash pieces. The artist that speaks to me about that is Garielle Lutz.

In actual conversation, though? That's my students. They're the ones I spend the most creative time with. I want to discover with them. Any prompt or exercise that I give them, I do with them. If there's a homework assignment, I'm going to try it out. Because when we're teaching creative writing, it's really about process. I want them to see me make mistakes or make slam dunks. It might be my favorite writing to do, these things that I'm not really intending to publish or add to my catalog, these things I am directly writing in conversation with my students.

What literary magazine would you recommend to your students?

I'll tell students to look at Chill Subs or any website that is making the lists for you and being creative about it. Part of the burden for literary art is placed on small presses and small literary journals. That allows an opportunity for some really interesting niche journals alongside the more established ones. Some that stand out to me: Hex Literary, X-R-A-Y, The Cincinnati Review’s Micro Series , The Forge, Smoke Long, Wig Leaf. 

I'm a managing editor of the TSR, The Southampton Review, and we are looking for new writers all the time. Molly Gaudy started her small press, Lit Pub, and a few friends and I started a new literary journal within the press called Moonlighting, which centers the outside work you have to do to support your writing. There are all sorts of niche magazines out there. I recommend students search those collective lists and find their people.

What is your writing process?

My process has been stretched like the elasticity on completely worn out sweatpants. When you're a working writer, you have to do everything from odd jobs to freelance jobs. Things don't always line up, and so you have to find ways to write in difficult scenarios. If I have the time to let my own rhythms settle in, it's usually in the evening when I can best access creativity. I'm mostly in a position where that doesn't line up. It’s about finding the time and figuring out how to be creative in those moments. 

I generally like to start writing and then outline as I go. I'm constantly generating some really rough, really creative drafts. Coloring outside the lines, and then backing up and seeing what's there.

How do you generate ideas?

For me, it's curiosity. What am I curious about? The goal isn't necessarily to find an answer, but I think the goal is to be curious about something and then turn the question over, invert it, revert it, and turn it upside down.

How do you manage when you get stuck?

I'll tell students this all the time, you have to be as creative getting to the page as you are on the page. What are we doing backstage to get on stage? You can get really creative about this. What if I wrote this chapter about a legal case as a letter to my late grandfather? What if I wrote a poem listening to metal music and then the same poem listening to Bach? The backstage work can help manufacture some of that generative curiosity.

Inspiration or perspiration?

Working with too much perspiration can shut down curiosity, but at the same time the inspiration always fades. You need to trust yourself through the perspiration, trust the work, and keep it going after the shiny feelings fade.

If you weren't a writer, what job would you have?

I really enjoy teaching. I really like being in a room with people. I like flattening the hierarchical structure of authority and starting to discover things together. I want to always be in a position to actively grow and there's no way to do that without a collective of people with an agreement to learn something. It’s very inspiring. I would find something to teach, even if I wasn't doing art.

Do you have a writing tip for emerging writers?

Don’t write towards the expectation of what you are supposed to sound like. If writing can be a practice of agency, writing how you think you are supposed to deletes yourself from the page. Give yourself permission to put yourself all over the page.