Alumni Spotlight: Venita Blackburn, Class of ’04

What are you up to right now?

I’m in my office procrastinating when I should be entering grades for student work :). I’m an associate professor at Fresno State University. This semester, I’m teaching two mixed-genre craft courses and one upper-division creative nonfiction class. The students are sweet and thoughtful. I also have two big writing projects I’m messing with (a new novel and a collection of short fiction). The novel is loosely about alien abductions and is the most practical thing to focus on, but the stories keep calling me. I feel fortunate to have no shortage of writing ideas. Time and energy, however, have their limitations on my productivity, which is fine. The end product is only one part of the real writer’s life. I accept that.

What sparked your decision to major in English?

After existing as a pre-business major for a couple of years, I realized my heart was in language. I’d always loved reading and writing, but I never saw a career in it at all. I came into the university expecting to become an entrepreneur, some corporate pencil skirt-wearing boss b-word. Well, I kept falling asleep in my business classes and taking creative writing classes and art electives that reminded me to be alive. Eventually, I made the major switch and never looked back. Technically, I resigned myself to a state of artistic poverty, which was what I believed and not what turned out to be the reality. I never thought being a teacher and an artist would be financially stable. I was very wrong. I don’t envy the tech-lord resources like I thought I would as a young person. I can see the fantasy of it all more clearly now, and what works in reality, what value there is in my obsession with humanity and putting language to the question of us, where we’ve been, where we’re going, and who we will become. Studying English turned out to be a lot more than reading old texts. Telling stories and studying storytelling as a craft encourages an understanding of complex layers of being that serve my daily life, perspectives, and judgments in ways I did not anticipate. I’m grateful.

Are there any specific courses, professors, or resources within the English department or USC that you’d highly recommend to current students?

I took classes mostly with Aimee Bender because of my creative writing emphasis. I learned a lot about possibility in narrative because of Aimee’s affinity for magical realism. My teaching style is also heavily attributable to her as well. I learned so much about what works in a classroom from that experience. I also was fortunate enough to take a course with Molly Bendall who really made me appreciate the poetics of language and gave me the idea that there is some poetry in me. I don’t consider myself a poet, but I do think about the minutia of sentences, rhythm and structure in ways that my prose peers aren’t typically invested in. That makes me just a little odd on the page. I’m fine with that. I met Dana Johnson at various points much later and can safely say the English faculty at USC are extraordinary.

If you attended or are enrolled in graduate school, what prompted your decision to attend graduate school? What do you see yourself doing after graduating?

 I applied to three universities and got into one. I was fortunate enough to be fully funded, which mattered to me then. Because I decided to teach and try to write a whole book, I figured I needed more help. I attended Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ for a three-year program. That gave me time to write a 300+ page thesis. Shortly after I graduated, I reduced that novel down to four pages and published that story, realizing flash fiction might be my thing. The day after I defended that thesis my mother passed and the bottom fell out from the world. My work became about grief and love and loneliness. Twelve years later I started to realize that everyone’s work seemed to be about grief, love, loneliness and something else that I’m calling a sense of wonder. We’re always stretching toward the things that excite and frighten, fill us with reverie and disgust. I have an MFA, which allows me to teach (along with the published books). I’d love an honorary doctorate from somewhere with a cool robe, but no more school is in the plan. I’m a tenured professor now with three books. I’ll continue to write and see what new discoveries come in the language.