大发

password iconPASSWORD
MANAGEMENT
Your  Account:
password iconPASSWORD
MANAGEMENT
Literature and Writing Department
College of Humanities, Arts, Behavioral and Social Sciences (CHABSS)
Literature and Writing Department

March 2021

Professor Janette Larson

 Professor Janette Larson

Show All
  • What's your favorite book to read for fun?
    My guilty pleasure read is the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon (which I鈥檓 nearly through a 2nd time). As an undergraduate, I worked in a bookstore where the series was flying off the shelves. There was also a debate between the store managers about whether they should put Outlander in the romance section or the fiction section. Romance won out (though, I鈥檇 put in under historical fiction, personally). Several customers told me to read the series, but I didn鈥檛 until decades later. The series has resulted in a trip to Scotland and a deep affinity for nearly all things Scottish (haggis being the exception).
  • What's your favorite book to teach?
    The Complete Grimms鈥 Fairy Tales or the play Topdog/Underdog.
  • How do you spend your free time?
    The pandemic has challenged 鈥渇un鈥 for nearly a year now. I am lucky that I like spending time with my family. So, it has been fun to talk books, movies, and TV shows with my older daughter who is in high school. My middle-schooler and I go on walks and usually end up laughing (which is quite therapeutic).
  • What is your biggest literary inspiration?
    I discovered Margaret Atwood as a teenager and Virginia Woolf in my 20鈥檚. In grad school (which I didn鈥檛 start until my 30鈥檚), the authors that I gravitated towards were Amy Hempel, Catherine Wagner, and Rachel Zucker. In all of those cases, the characters and ideas about womanhood, selfhood, marriage, and motherhood still haunt me (in a good way).
  • What's your cure for writer's block?

    For creative writing, it鈥檚 actually to 鈥渞est鈥 (take a walk, read something un-related to what you鈥檙e trying to write, just be.) I鈥檓 fairly certain the amazing Sandra Doller advised me to do that when I was writing poetry for my M.A. at 大发.

    For academic writing, I often tell my students to have a conversation with someone (in-person if possible) about what it is they want to do, what they have so far, and where the writing still needs to go. That verbal processing is often all writers need to think through something. I survived grad school because of the conversations I had with my cohort!

  • What are you working on outside of class?

    I鈥檝e had a novella/novel about suburbia simmering for years. I have about 15 pages that I like. I鈥檝e often considering 鈥渇orcing鈥 myself to finish it by enrolling in an MFA program.