Photograph taken by Donna Steiner at Ridge Road. I’m reading Patrick O’Brian, Book 12, The Letter of Marque. The coffee I made myself.
Leigh Allison Wilson
Professor and Director of Creative Writing
Education: I studied at Williams College for my B.A. and did post-grad work in creative writing as a Hoyns Fellow at the University of Virginia. Got my MFA from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. But I have to say, I think I’m a writer because where I grew up, in Tennessee, people loved to tell stories (particularly as critiques of their neighbors…)
Courses Taught: I’ve taught all the levels of fiction writing, and have offered as changing topics classes several different advanced fiction workshops: Flash Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Autobiographical Fiction, even a Small Town Settings course. Other classes I’ve taught: Living Writers Series (CRW 300), Writing Reviews for Books and Film (CRW 408), Modern Media and Culture (ENG 220), Introduction to Literature (ENG 204). My favorite class might be one I taught at a Tennessee middle school one day fifteen years ago: Ten Things I’ve Said That I Wish I Could Take Back.
Favorite Writers:
Novels: Herman Melville—Moby Dick is my desert island book…guy threw everything he had into it, including the kitchen sink; Patrick O’Brian—just started reading him last year and love his idea of friendship, as traced in the 21 books of the Master and Commander series; Jane Austen—someone simply saying “hello” has you rolling your eyes, scandalized, so you can’t hate that, but there’s also the incredibly funny critique of human foible.
Some YA favorites: To Kill a Mockingbird, Feed, The Book Thief, The Outsiders. Some short story favorites: Raymond Carver, Chekhov, Flannery O’Connor, Alice Munro, John Cheever, George Saunders. Poets: Tony Hoagland, Elizabeth Bishop, Sharon Olds, C.D. Wright. OK, just for the record, I’m not crazy about these lists. I’m thinking of about 500 other books and regretting their omission from this paragraph. Those ghosts will haunt me.
Leigh Wilson's collection, From the Bottom Up, was awarded the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction in 1983. Click the photo above to order a copy.
Miscellany: I like chipmunks and woodpeckers and coneflowers and hostas and black cherry trees—all things that live in my yard on Ridge Road. I’m not crazy about snakes but they live here too, so (as with all of our more tiresome relatives) I grin and bear them. Also the giant centipedes. I grew up in the southern Appalachians, and not surprisingly I love mountains and woods.
Here’s how I couldn’t be happier: I’m reading in a lawn chair on one of Oswego’s perfect summer days, all of the flowers in my yard are in bloom and I can smell them, my tame chipmunk is pretending to eat something about two feet away, and suddenly I realize the shadow across the sun is a family of herons, headed for the rookery below Ridge Road.
If you’re looking for advice about the differences between novels and flash fiction and short stories, or you’re curious about book and film reviewing, or you have a cool fossil (or even a cool rock), talk to Professor Wilson.
Click here to be taken to Professor Wilson's official SUNY Oswego faculty page.