Meet the new faculty
This week: Brendan Mathews
by Omie Hsu | Llama Ledger Staff
Issue date: 10/3/07 Section: News
"I just had to do it. I closed down every other option or else I would always wonder 'What if?' 'What if?' 'What if?'" and so Brendan Mathews left Chicago with the goal of professionally writing in mind to attend graduate school as a segue that would eventually connect him to a position as a professor of Creative Writing at Simon's Rock.
Growing up in Albany, N.Y., Mathews had "a family of business people and deal makers. Our idea of professions was very practical. But as long as I could remember, writing was something I wanted to do."
From upstate New York, Mathews went on to attend the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and it was here, "in college, that writing really became a passion."
He took this interest to Chicago where he wrote for The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to add to the list of publications of his published works that would eventually come to include the Virginia Quarterly Review, Epoch, Glimmer Train Stories, Southwest Review, TriQuarterly and The Southern Review.
While in Chicago, Mathews focused his efforts in journalism but still "always wanted to be a fiction writer." After 11 years, he realized, "I can't put it off anymore, I just knew I would always come back to it," and so, decided to apply to graduate school at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville to finally find "the discipline I needed" to be a fiction writer.
What Simon's Rock now finds itself with is "not some scholar, but a practitioner," he says. He is currently working towards publishing his first series of short stories and it is this experience that he hopes to bring into the classroom.
"What I want to do here is ask 'What else can we add to the classroom?'" He speaks from the perspective of an educator who does not believe that a textbook encompasses all knowledge but instead, "what can supplement [that] textbook."
"I was hired to develop the Creative Writing program," said Mathews. What he can offer is that, "I am a writer," although he admittedly accepts, "that I will never be John Grisham."
He speaks to his classes as a man who "had hobbies before I had kids," and, "used to have a mountain bike once," but more importantly is "a writer because I'm a passionate reader, as geeky as that sounds."
So with his wife and three children, Matthews moved to the Berkshires to enlighten his writing classes with his own experience and "to be a part of this tradition with energy and passion."
Contact the author: ohsu@llamaledger.com
Growing up in Albany, N.Y., Mathews had "a family of business people and deal makers. Our idea of professions was very practical. But as long as I could remember, writing was something I wanted to do."
From upstate New York, Mathews went on to attend the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and it was here, "in college, that writing really became a passion."
He took this interest to Chicago where he wrote for The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to add to the list of publications of his published works that would eventually come to include the Virginia Quarterly Review, Epoch, Glimmer Train Stories, Southwest Review, TriQuarterly and The Southern Review.
While in Chicago, Mathews focused his efforts in journalism but still "always wanted to be a fiction writer." After 11 years, he realized, "I can't put it off anymore, I just knew I would always come back to it," and so, decided to apply to graduate school at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville to finally find "the discipline I needed" to be a fiction writer.
What Simon's Rock now finds itself with is "not some scholar, but a practitioner," he says. He is currently working towards publishing his first series of short stories and it is this experience that he hopes to bring into the classroom.
"What I want to do here is ask 'What else can we add to the classroom?'" He speaks from the perspective of an educator who does not believe that a textbook encompasses all knowledge but instead, "what can supplement [that] textbook."
"I was hired to develop the Creative Writing program," said Mathews. What he can offer is that, "I am a writer," although he admittedly accepts, "that I will never be John Grisham."
He speaks to his classes as a man who "had hobbies before I had kids," and, "used to have a mountain bike once," but more importantly is "a writer because I'm a passionate reader, as geeky as that sounds."
So with his wife and three children, Matthews moved to the Berkshires to enlighten his writing classes with his own experience and "to be a part of this tradition with energy and passion."
Contact the author: ohsu@llamaledger.com
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