“I do teach fiction and non-fiction, and usually I'm interested in works that confuse genre, but I'm very new to teaching creative writing, I don't have an MFA, or a PhD, I tend to approach it just through my own practice.” WritingMy OwnFictionTeachPracticeCreativeTeachingApproachGenreCreative WritingNon FictionPhds Author:Kate Zambreno
“I try to tell student writers to read as much as possible, not only literature but philosophy, theory, and to form obsessions. There's a big taboo in fiction creative writing workshops against using the self at all, and I think I try to encourage students to write the self, but to connect the self to something larger, which is to be this thinking, seeing, searching, eternally curious person, and that writing can come out of investigating and trying to understand confusion, and doubts, and obsessions.” ThinkingWritingTryingPersonsSelfPhilosophyBigsFormLiteratureFictionCreativeDoubtSeeingStudentsTheoryObsessionConfusionCuriousCreative WritingTabooWorkshopsInvestigatingWriting WorkshopEncourage Students Author:Kate Zambreno
“I think that writing and publishing are different. I think I will always write; I might not always publish. The idea of not publishing is wonderful!” ThinkingWritingIdeasDifferentMightWonderfulPublishingPublish Author:Kate Zambreno
“The biographies of the great men see their excesses as signs of their greatness. But Jean Rhys, in her biography, is read as borderline; Anaïs Nin is borderline; Djuna is borderline; etc. etc. Borderline personality disorder being an overwhelmingly gendered diagnosis. I write in Heroines: “The charges of borderline personality disorder are the same charges against girls writing literature, I realize - too emotional, too impulsive, no boundaries."” MenWritingGirlLiteratureRealizingGreatnessEmotionalPersonalityBoundariesGreat MenEtcDisorderExcessBiographiesDiagnosisHeroinesImpulsiveNo BoundariesBorderlinePersonality Disorders Author:Kate Zambreno
“My writing has always been considered extremely important, even though I make slim-to-no money at it.” WritingImportantNo MoneySlim Author:Kate Zambreno
“All of my wildness is in the writing. I have discovered I have to be orderly and boring in my personal life to be wild in my work.” WritingBoringPersonal LifeOrderlyWildness Author:Kate Zambreno
“It is only through having a stable loving partnership that I began to feel in control enough to attempt a strict writing discipline, to realize something I always knew was simmering underneath.” FeelsWritingEnoughRealizingDisciplineStablePartnershipStrict Author:Kate Zambreno
“If one writes the rules then one can contradict oneself. It's all about rhetoric, about official narratives.” IfsWritingOneselfNarrativeOfficialsRhetoric Author:Kate Zambreno
“One of my moments of coming to writing, of needing to write to attempt to create myself, to attempt to absolve and understand my past passivity, came when a girl I loved very much, who I had been estranged from for some time, killed herself.” WritingMomentsPastGirlMy PastPassivity Author:Kate Zambreno
“I think the key to writing the truth of our existences, so much of this is being incubated online, is examining the conflicts and the messiness, our sometimes dividedness, dealing with gender and other hierarchies, and also our identities outside of them, deeply personal and yet somehow critical and circumspect.” ThinkingWritingSometimesExistenceIdentityKeysConflictGenderCriticalOnlineHierarchyExaminingMessiness Author:Kate Zambreno
“The hope in literature is that we are allowed to be imperfect, to write of our imperfection, without being overly critiqued for being unlikeable.” WritingLiteratureImperfectionImperfect Author:Kate Zambreno
“I am curious to see what books will emerge from all this writing online that's the result of those who grew up pouring their feelings out on Livejournal or Tumblr - excessive, sometimes automatic, sometimes enraged, emotional, while also quite intellectual - or if formal books will emerge at all, if that's not the point of these unmediated raw spaces. I'm excited by the possibility.” IfsWritingBookSometimesFeelingsSpaceResultsPossibilityEmotionalGrewGrew UpIntellectualExcitedCuriousOnlineFormalPouring Author:Kate Zambreno
