A Creative Venture

Scott Kaukenon is the award winning author of a tale of short stories, “Ordination” and is an English Professor at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, TX. He has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona and a PhD in Creative Writing from University of Missouri-Columbia. I got a chance to sit down and talk to him about anything from his history as a writer to the processes in obtaining a degree in Creative Writing.

I) How long have you been writing? Specifically, how long have you been
writing creatively?

It sort of depends on what you want to count as "writing." I was writing
stories in elementary school, ten-, twelve-page handwritten short stories
with central characters who looked a lot like me and who had the sort of
experiences you often find in made-for-TV movies. I recall writing, when I
was in fourth grade, about a blonde-haired ten-year-old downhill ski
champion who was in Finland trying to win the world junior downhill title
while also battling leukemia. Finland, because my family's heritage goes
back to Finland (though I've never been there). A ten-year-old with blonde
hair, because I was ten years old with blonde hair. Leukemia, because
nothing's more melodramatic for a story than a child's bravery in the face
of a deadly disease. Even at ten, I understood this.

In terms of thinking professionally about writing, I first had the inkling
to write, especially fiction, as an undergraduate, partly under the
influence of my professors at Hope College, Jack Ridl, in particular. They
introduced me really to the idea of writing as a means for thinking about
and exploring the world, of wrestling through story with the world in
which we live and all its complications. Until that point, as much as a
read as a child and as much as I enjoyed stories, I tended to see writing,
at least in a professional context, as merely a skill you needed to have
for a job--memos, cover letters, reports. I really had no idea how one
became a fiction writer.

I did spend six years after undergraduate as a sports writer in Michigan,
two years with a small local paper and then four years with the Grand
Rapids Press, a larger regional paper. The experience of writing daily, of
writing on deadline, of trying to find new ways to tell the same stories
(someone won, someone lost), of listening to people speak served as
another layer in my development as a writer.

II) Your collection of short stories "Ordination" was well received in the
writing community. Are you going to stay with the short story genre or
branch out to the novel genre?

I'm currently at work trying to finish a novel. I love the challenge of
the novel as a form, its breadth and scope, the freedom it allows, setting
so much in motion and then trying to get it to all work together in some
way. I'm sure I'll continue to write in both genres as time goes along
since each genre provides its own challenges and pleasures.

III) After receiving your Masters from the University of Arizona, what
made you to pursue your PhD in creative writing?

It was at the University of Arizona that I believe I began to find my
voice as a writer, and while in the MFA program, I'd discovered as well
that I thoroughly enjoyed teaching at the university level. But then
suddenly that brief span of 2 1/2 years was over, and I wanted to find a
way to keep doing both of those things. I taught briefly as an adjunct at
U of A, but I didn't see it as viable way of maintaining a career, and so
I began to investigate Ph.D. programs with a creative dissertation option.
It was one way of "staying in the game," as I often say, while continuing
to develop as a writer, a scholar, and a teacher, and to give myself a
chance to write those stories that would eventually find publication and
truly get my career off the ground. Mizzou provided an excellent situation
and a supportive environment for that to happen for me.

IV) What are the major differences/challenges between the process of
earning a Masters compared to the work in obtaining a PhD in creative
writing?

Well, MFA programs are distinct in many ways from Ph.D. programs. MFA
programs tend to require two to three years; Ph.D. programs four to six.
MFA programs are studio programs, generally speaking, and so the emphasis
is on the writing workshop itself with a relatively lesser emphasis on
literature and theory (though this varies greatly from program to
program). In general, the Ph.D. expects more of the writer in terms of
academic scholarship, in terms of course work in literature and theory,
and in terms of the traditional comprehensive exams. But it does vary
greatly from program to program, though fundamentally both come down to a
lot of reading and a lot of writing.

V) You teach at Sam Houston State University. Do you think your approach
to teaching your writing classes is different with a PhD than with a
Masters?

I don't know that's it different. I've written more, taught more, been
more intentional in my pedagogy since I earned the Master's, but that
reflects experience (both life and classroom experience) as much as it
reflects the degree.