Assistant Professor of English Karin Lin-Greenberg can be found on campus teaching creative writing classes and advising students in her Kiernan Hall office. In addition to teaching and helping students find their way, Professor Lin-Greenberg writes her own stories. Her collection of short stories, Faulty Predictions, was recently published this fall by the University of Georgia Press. The book even received the prestigious Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction in 2013. The Siena community is proud to have her among its ranks!
Hometown: I grew up in a town called Millburn, New Jersey.
Most influential book or author: I don’t know if I can pick just one. I think that you’re influenced by everything you read, and I think that for me I’m always learning from things I’m reading, things I’m teaching, so I don’t know if I can just say one. I could probably give you a hundred. As writers you just have to be open to everything and you learn from everything. So it’s this idea of you having to absorb things in terms of what’s working well with what you want to try in your work and what’s not working well. I think for me, it’s not just one thing to go back to, it’s sort of always reading as a writer.
Favorite Class to Teach: I like teaching any creative writing classes, but I think I like teaching Writing Short Fiction, which I teach every semester.
How Many Years at Siena: This is my third year.
Her Campus Siena: So where did the title Faulty Predictions come from?
KLG: That was the title of one of the stories in the collection, and I was working with the series editor trying to figure out if there’s a title of a story that would work for the entire collection that would relate to everything. We came up with that one because there are these characters that think they know what’s going to happen in their lives and where things will go. But in all of the stories, something goes wrong or something unexpected happens, so it seemed like it was a title that most fit with the entire collection.
HC Siena: Did you write any stories that didn’t make it into the book, and if so, how did you decide which ones made the final cut?
KLG: I’ve been writing for a long time, basically since college and even before college. I have lots and lots of stories, so I think it was just a matter of figuring out, “How do you put together a book? How do you put together a collection of stories that feel that they go together?” So there were a lot of stories that I wrote and some of them were published separately in literary journals. I was just trying to find a group of stories that felt like they went together in terms of tone, voice, and perspective – how these characters look at the world. All of these stories have some humorous elements, all of these stories have characters that are dealing with some sort of problem or issue. They just felt that they went together tonally and in terms of the writing style and voice.
HC Siena: Do you have a favorite story from your book or one that you’re most proud of?
KLG: You know, it’s hard to say a favorite, but I think for me it’s always the last story I wrote. The most recent story is the last story in the book. It’s called “Half and Half Club”. It’s the longest story in the book and I think in some ways it’s kind of the most complicated because it’s from the point of view of a bunch of different characters. So I think that story was maybe the most fun story to write, but also just the last story I wrote of that collection.
HC Siena: Do you have a normal writing routine?
KLG: I don’t. Sometimes during the school year when things are really busy I won’t write for months. I try to write a lot over the summer and during breaks, but I think it really just depends on how busy I am from day to day. If I can squeeze in writing, I will, but there’s definitely times where there’s no writing happening.
HC Siena: Any plans for a second book anytime soon?
KLJ: A book takes a long, long time and not even just in terms of the writing, but getting it accepted somewhere and between the time this book was accepted and the time it was published was over a year. So, right now, I’m still working on some more stories and also working on a novel, which is kind of getting a lot of stuff together and trying to get it out into the world!
HC Siena: What is your favorite thing about the Siena community and does it tie into your writing at all?
KLG: I really like teaching these creative writing classes. I do think it ties into writing! I think that to be able to sit in a classroom and talk to people about stories, both published stories and their stories, and just having good discussions makes me want to go home and write. Also the ability to teach new and interesting classes! I’m teaching a class right now on research in fiction writing and thinking about doing a story that involves some research, and I don’t know if I’d want to write that story if I weren’t teaching that class. So, definitely the classes.
HC Siena: What advice would you give to aspiring writers, particularly those at Siena?
KLG: I think my biggest piece of advice is just to keep going, keep working. Be patient. Don’t worry too much about getting published – I think that that’s a question people always ask me now. “How’d you get published?” For me, I think the more important question is, “how do I get better?” I think that people are just really impatient because there’s so many places to get published at now. I always say that to think about if you get something published online, would you be happy ten years from now because it’s not going to disappear? I think that it’s the idea of working on getting better and working hard and leave the publishing for a little later. It’s okay! It’s okay if you’re older than 25 to publish something! That’s totally fine.
Check out booksellers such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Indie Bound to purchase your own copies of Faulty Predictions!