Richard Wiley retired this year from the 51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ English department faculty. He cofounded 51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ’s graduate creative writing program and the .
Before retiring, you had been at 51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ since 1989 and at Black Mountain Institute since 2006. Was it hard to say goodbye?
Life in Tacoma, Washington, is very nice—and very different from Las Vegas. Right now, I’m looking out at the bay and the fishing boats. It was easy enough to say goodbye. I love 51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ and BMI, and I’m very proud of what we accomplished there. But the initial reason for being at 51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ or anywhere else, for that matter, is that I’m a writer. And I’m still a writer, no matter where I am.
You’re back in your hometown after a lifetime of travels — Korea (with the Peace Corps, 1967-69), Tokyo (studying and teaching from 1970-74), Nigeria (working at the American International School, 1982-85) and Kenya (running the Association of International Schools for Africa, 1986-88). But the longest stay by far was in Las Vegas. Did it become a second hometown for you?
Oh, absolutely — 25 years is a long time. It was terrific. I was embraced by the city and by 51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ right from the start. I got to be here before there even was a graduate program in creative writing: I was the first professor hired to develop the MFA program.
Tell me about the process of being present at the creation of the creative writing program in 2000. How did the program’s unique international emphasis emerge?
Creative writing programs are sort of a dime a dozen, so we wanted to make something that wasn’t a copy of Iowa [Writers Workshop]. Something that was rigorous, and less of a studio program — and I wanted it to be an international program. Then Doug Unger arrived. He had spent his high school years in Argentina, so we both had that international interest and we decided to make that a core element of the program. Today, we are still the only MFA program that has a required international component. We wanted to push our students into the larger world, to shake up their perspective, and put new ways of thinking, new ways of life, before their eyes.
Your seven novels are in many ways inspired by your international travels. How did getting out of your cultural comfort zone, shape you as a writer?
I’m still an American writer in my sensibilities, but my young man’s assuredness of what life was about was transformed by those first years away from the U.S. — especially by Korea and the Peace Corps. That was revolutionary for me.
Your most recent work, The Book of Important Moments, is partly set in Nigeria and in Tacoma. Is there a Las Vegas novel somewhere in your future?
I hope so. I’ve never written about a place while I’m still living there; I’ve written about places only when I already live somewhere else. I wrote about Tacoma while I was living in Las Vegas. Now I’ve just finished a short novel set in New York City, and I’m working on something set in Israel and Palestine. I suspect Vegas as a setting for fiction for me would be half a decade away. [More about The Book of Important Moments]
While you’ve retired from Black Mountain Institute and 51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ, you are still a member of BMI’s advisory board. How do you feel about the future of the institute you helped create?
Josh Shenk, the new executive director, is energetic and smart as hell. He and Maile Chapman, who succeeds me as artistic director, really have it covered. Maile is a very special person. She got her Ph.D. here and is a professor in the English department. We’ve worked a lot together, and we formed a symbiotic relationship. We also share a hometown, though there’s a generation’s difference in age.
Here’s a historical memory that we share: In 1986, I taught Japanese for a semester in a high school here in Tacoma. That January, I was in the classroom when we learned about the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Well, Maile was a student in that school: We were in the same building when the Challenger blew up. We figured that out only a couple of years ago.
