Professor

I am Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Professor of the Graduate Division at the University of California, Riverside (UCR).

At UCR I taught courses and workshops on creative nonfiction and fiction, our graduate proseminar The Writer’s Life, courses on contemporary literature and literary history, a course on book reviewing and interviewing, and one on literary theory for writers.

Prior to UCR, I taught at Stanford University, University of Iowa, CalArts, and the University of Copenhagen.  At those schools I taught courses on American literature and culture, on the 1920s, regionalism, realism, literary theory, literature and film, noir, the Harlem Renaissance, Los Angeles literature, contemporary literature, specific authors (Wharton, Yezierska, Cather, DuBois, Henry and William James, McKay, Dresier, Fauset, and others), and, related to my writing, courses on crying, work and slacking, cosmopolitanism, and the years 1903 and 1925.

I was Director of UCR’s Annual Literary Festival Writers Week for almost a decade, for the last several years sharing the honors with Allison Hedge Coke. Writers Week was a week-long conference with over 25 writers each year; guests have included Margaret Atwood, Maxine Hong Kingston, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, John Rechy, Rita Dove, Jamaica Kincaid, Joy Harjo, Juan Felipe Herrera, Walter Mosely, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Rigoberto Gonzalez, Roxane Gay, Rachel Cusk, Daniel Alarcón, Percival Everett, Ishmael Reed, Seth Greenland, Michelle Huneven, Aimee Bender, Mike Davis, Yxta Maya Murray, Hector Tobar, Nina Revoyr, Sandra Cisneros, Corneilus Eady, Linda Hogan, T.C. Boyle, Luis Rodriguez, Karen Tei Yamashita, Rita Dove, Stephan Graham Jones, LeAnn Howe, Jane Smiley, Seth Greenland, Robin Coste Lewis, Michael Tolkin, Michelle Latiolais, Li-Young Lee, Dagoberto Gilb, Claudia Rankine, NoViolet Bulawayo, Steph Cha, Jamaica Kincaid, Jayne Anne Phillips, Geoff Dyer, David Shields, Danzy Senna, Wanda Coleman, Mona Simpson, Patricia Hampl, and many others.

I stepped down as Chair of the department in June 2023, and from directorship of Writers Week in February 2024. I became Distinguished Professor Emeritus in July 2024, and was appointed Professor of the Graduate Division shortly thereafter..