Author Profile – Laura Moulton

This will be the first of several posts that profile local writers, Literary Arts staff, and Writers in the Schools (WITS) residents and students.

Today I’m excited to introduce Writers in the Schools author Laura Moulton. Laura is originally from Kuna, Idaho, but now resides in Portland, Oregon. Laura was kind enough to answer some of our questions.

What is the most recent book you’ve read?

Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever by Walter Kirn.

What are you currently working on?

For the last year or so I’ve been at work on a novel set in Provo, Utah in the early 1990s. It’s about a band of Merry Prankster-style Mormon kids, coming of age at a religious university.

What are you currently reading?

Everything by Dan Chaon. I went to a workshop on character development/authorial distance given by him at Wordstock and his advice was very helpful – it made me wish I could follow him around for a year, writing down everything he says, but in lieu of that, (since he’s a professor at Oberlin, and doesn’t live in Portland) I’ll read all his books.

How does Oregon influence your writing?

Oregon is a terrific place to hatch projects and mad schemes (and sometimes get them funded). My husband and I ran the literary journal Gumball Poetry for nine years in Portland, and at various times we received financial support from Literary Arts and RACC, not to mention the support from all the cafes and bookstores that hosted a Gumball Poetry vending machine. So I think that the state itself is full of opportunities for writers and artists, and ever since I moved to Portland in 1998, I’ve had the sense that Portland is just packed to the gills with writers, all furiously typing alongside one another, or writing in longhand on legal notebooks in cafes, or emailing installments of novels to their mothers. That sort of thing. Oregon feels extremely supportive of its writers, and I’m very glad to live among them in Portland.

Did you write in high school?

I did write in high school. An early piece of fiction that earned me attention (in the form of a 2-day suspension my senior year) was a phony letter I typed during my typing class and distributed to faculty mailboxes, supposedly from Bill Graham, my history teacher at the time. The letter declared that recent warm weather was causing “lovemaking” in the halls, and called for condom dispensers to be installed in the restrooms and counselor’s office. What I remember best about the prank was the thrill at getting his voice right, (and it wasn’t just his spelling of “permiscuous”). The fact that some teachers believed the memo was real, and confronted Graham gave me hope that I really could write convincing fiction.

What does WITS do for the student? Performance? Confidence?

I think that WITS can be a lot of different things for a student. A WITS residency might mark one of the first times a student has been able to truly play and experiment with words, and temporarily suspend the rules of more academic writing. I’ve seen students who are reluctant writers discover graphic novels (like local graphic novelist Craig Thompson’s Blankets, or Sentences: The Life and Times of MF Grimm) and realize that it’s possible to tell a story with their own art work and a more economical use of words. I’ve worked with students who wrote very little for me, but who decided in the last week or two of the residency that they wanted to read a story or poem at the final WITS reading, and I’ve watched these same students stand at the mic in front of a crowd at a bookstore or café, stepping away from their former reluctant selves to screw up their courage and read this piece of art they’ve made, and afterward they just shine, shine.

What school do you teach at?

I have had the opportunity to teach at lots of schools around the city, from Franklin to Madison to Grant. My favorite residencies have been at Jefferson High School and Harriet Tubman Academy for Young Women. This spring I’m slated to teach a residency at Lincoln High School that will utilize the Portland Art Museum – that will be a very exciting collaboration, and I’m really looking forward it.

What is one piece of advice that you always tell your students?

Every time I start a new residency, I begin by challenging my students to keep a writer’s notebook. In fact, I tell them that if they carry a notebook with them during the length of my residency, writing at least 3 times a week, I will buy them lunch on the last day. I tell them to observe with fresh energy all of the people and things around them, to record the oddbird conversations they hear on the #6 bus, to describe an argument they’ve heard their parents have, to write when they feel lonely or afraid, and so on. It’s all about gathering up the raw material of their lives, so that we might begin to render it on paper in the class, and shape their stories. So I guess the one piece of advice I always tell my students is that they are the experts on their particular lives: no one else looks through their eyes onto their experience, and no one else can tell the story like they can.