Circling Origins with Claire Campbell
Photo by Courtney Allen.
Back in May for one of my Spalding capstone projects, I had the great pleasure of sitting down with Claire Campbell over Zoom to discuss her literary life! I’ve attended some of Claire’s online writing classes over the past couple years and am a huge fan of her process and community. This interview was genuinely one of the most enriching discussions I’ve had with another writer and I’m so excited to get to share all of her cool experience and wisdom with you!
Claire Campbell is a writer, mentor, and founder of the Blue Stone Writers online community. She teaches Creative Writing at her undergraduate alma mater Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, and is an alum of the Sarah Lawrence MFA in Creative Nonfiction program. She also hosts a tarot-themed writing podcast, The Fool and the Page.
Dipping into your background a little, tell me about your path in writing and your experience with literary academia?
Claire Campbell: As an undergrad at Southwestern, I was an English major and then I did an independent major that was a combo of anthropology and environmental studies. But when I think back, all my most powerful mentors were extremely writing-focused in their coursework and their syllabi. It was social sciences classes but yet, it's also about evolving the way that you write, the way that you research, the way that you synthesize ideas. Southwestern also has a great writing center where I worked and learned about one-on-one mentoring and teaching. I think really as an undergrad is when I started to realize that, for me, teaching and writing went hand in hand, and they sort of always would, and it was kind of hard to imagine one without the other. For example, just teaching but not having an active writer's life individually, or just writing and not having an active teaching life, that didn't really make sense to me and still doesn't. I think the two go together for me as an artist. Everybody's different.
It was only in moving to New York and then going to grad school at Sarah Lawrence that I started to think about manuscripts, novels, longer sort of projects that were solid things that existed perhaps outside of working life. I didn't go to grad school right away. But when I went to Sarah Lawrence in the early aughts, I had been interested in it because there weren't a lot of creative nonfiction programs. Now the MFA world has figured out that that's something people will pay for, so they've definitely created a lot of creative nonfiction master’s opportunities. But at the time, there really weren't that many, and that was what I had been writing as an undergrad was creative nonfiction. I was writing about having cancer when I was 20. So, I was writing about women's health and the environment, because I was looking into my family history in terms of this landscape in northwestern Michigan that was rapidly changing and my grandmother's immigrant experience coming to that landscape, and then learning how to weave that all into a very individual intimate health experience. The cool thing about creative nonfiction is that you can sort of tie together these seemingly loosely related things and actually find that they're all part of this really gorgeous pattern.
So, as an undergrad, because I'd sought out these professors who were very writing focus, I was allowed to just do this kind of experimental writing for things like a thesis and a capstone. It's like, "Yeah, you want to write memoir for your capstone? Go for it." So, I was really lucky.
I continued that at Sarah Lawrence because they had a creative nonfiction program. And they're also, by virtue I think of being in proximity to New York, very real-world writer-focused in the sense that they would really put you out into the community to teach. So, those were two of the reasons why I went to Sarah Lawrence, and two of the things that I found to be true is that the creative nonfiction program allowed you to dabble in another genres while still being nonfiction-focused. Then also there were all these great teaching opportunities. While I was there, I taught at a rehab center for ex-cons in upstate New York. I taught at a middle school in the Lower East Side. These early teaching writing experiences would end up really informing my career post-grad and would lead me to teach writing at the university level early on, leave it for a little while, and then come back to it as I have now almost 15 years later.
I've also been a genre fiction writer who is trained to write nonfiction. So, as a nonfiction writer who trained in an MFA program to write nonfiction, I found myself post-MFA writing more and more fantasy sci-fi because that's what I read as a child. That's what I read as a teen. I think our writing life is very much a spiral. We're sort of always circling our origins as readers, and as writers, we're always circling our origins with storytellers. I think even though I spiraled out into creative nonfiction—which I very much still apply in terms of writing fiction and still do for work and for money—I'm always kind of spiraling home to the kid who was discovering Ursula K. Le Guin novels on her grandmother's shelf.
So, when I think about literary academia, it's funny because I think at the time that I was at Sarah Lawrence, I was also really doubling down on what I like to read, despite being in the company of people who were hardcore nonfiction readers. I would feel sort of like a fish out of water. Like, I haven't read the Joan Didion canon. I haven't read Gore Vidal. And frankly, who gives a fuck about Gore Vidal? I was like, “Does anybody want to talk about sci-fi?” Which, of course, most of them didn't, because they were there to write nonfiction. But I think what's great about the academic experience in writing—and I know it's not for everybody—but I do think it can sort of galvanize your purpose as a writer, both by showing you books and mentors whom you really want to emulate or take inspiration from, and also showing you things that you're kind of supposed to do but repel you. Then you're like, "I don't need that." Because you don't have to do anything you don't want do in the writing life, especially if you're not getting paid, and most of us aren't.
Between then and now, what was your path into independent writing mentorship and founding Blue Stone Writers?
CC: Mostly my career has been in adult education. Fresh out of grad school, I taught in an accelerated degree program, which is fantastic working with people who are coming back to an undergraduate degree after being in the working world for 20, 30 years. I just adored it. I've always loved working with young writers, and I still do, but there's something really magical about working with people in their 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, who are rediscovering the writer within that they may have had to kind of put on the shelf since high school.
After that, I worked in New York City schools for a non-profit that trained parents to tutor kids in the classroom. So, I was doing workshops in all fields of study. I mean, we did what was needed. But I sort of became more focused in writing because, when you work at a non-profit and everybody's doing like fifty different jobs, you tend to notice what are everybody's passions and gifts, and then it's like, "You like writing? Cool. We need you for this like that." A lot of times that's how the non-profit world works because you just desperately need to tap into everybody's talents because there's only so much people power.
I was also occasionally working with the publishing industry to bring kids to publishing houses or to bring literary agents into the classroom to teach writing workshops. I was always sort of tapped into that spiraling back to that MFA experience in the sense of I was working in some of the poorest public schools in New York City, but I was also occasionally hanging out at Random House.
When I moved back to Austin, Texas with my husband after 10 years, I started to dip into the Austin literary scene, which is a really vibrant one and I didn't know that. As a writer, I think you definitely have to break some eggs when you look for new community in a new place; you have to be willing to try a bunch of different communities.
I started working for The Writing Barn, which is a writing retreat center in south Austin. That really got me into teaching again. So, I was really trying to work the writing instructor muscles. I didn't want to lose that. Then, really the pandemic was the path to sort of founding Blue Stone Writers because, in the pandemic, I had just started a brand-new non-profit gig, writing grants and working in development. I think I was at that job for a month before we were remote. I was pumped for this gig, but suddenly I was alone and I wasn't with the people that I'd signed on to work with. I'm an ambivert, I can't just be alone to feel nourished and supportive creatively. My way to feel like I was in a writer's community was to teach remote online classes through my own website. So, while I was working full-time, I was just doing this to feel creatively fulfilled and to feel like I was making connections with fellow writers. Then as I got more and more dismayed and disgruntled with the full-time remote experience at my job, that's when I decided to take the risk and go it alone, do the independent writing mentorship with my own business and work with individual clients and teach classes.
Having to completely pivot because of the pandemic obviously altered how you experience not just the broad community but the literary community and your creative environment. You led field trips before and were able to hold retreats and workshops outside of Zoom. What places or writing community activities have you missed the most, or that were so inspiring that you've repurposed it in a remote fashion?
CC: I think retreats, for sure. I'm lucky enough to be a part of a writer's group of women writers in Austin who retreats together regularly. We, for a long time, did not do anything in person. We're just starting to do writing days together, and that's been wonderful. We did manage to repurpose the idea of a retreat a couple times where we would just meet up and work remotely and find accountability that way. But it wasn't the same. When you're actually in person again finally, it's like, "Oh, wow, yeah, we really need this. We really need to be amongst peers." So, I think I so missed the retreat experience, the opportunity to be in community with creative peers who really challenge you because they're doing work that's different from yours because they have a different background from yours, they have different strengths from yours. That difference is I think really invigorating and really necessary to the artist process.
I found a couple ways as an instructor to make it happen remotely, in the sense that I got really into the Pomodoro Method because I think when working alone you are so easily distracted in your home office. I started teaching these three-hour Pomodoro-style retreats online. I just this past February did the first in-person one at The Writing Barn, and I'm going to do another one in June. So, I'm sort of coming back to that in-person experience.
I would say the other retreat that's been so important is this Wild Moon retreat that I do with my collaborator, Cecily Sailer, who's the founder of Typewriter Tarot, where we incorporate creativity and tarot and nature writing, movement, and mindfulness into what was a three-day overnight retreat. In the pandemic lulls, we've managed to turn it into an intensive one-day retreat, which we never thought it would be. So, everybody's vaxxed and tested and then you come and stay for one day, and it's great. I'd like to think we would've tried that eventually, but the pandemic really forced our hand. The pandemic has inspired us to be really creative in a way that is arguably more accessible for a lot of people. So, Wild Moon became this thing that has this flexibility and adaptability. A lot of the retreats and field trips that I thought of as being strictly in-person and strictly along a particular timeline, the pandemic has sort of opened up these alternate possibilities.
One of the best writer field trips that I would do was going to the free public Stickwork exhibit outdoors in Pease Park in Austin. This artist, Patrick Daugherty, creates these cool, rooted willow tree shapes that seemed to have grown out of the ground. You just wander into the park, and you wander in and out of these sapling shelters and you write, and it was so incredibly stimulating and inspiring for writers. But when we couldn't do that, it forced me to think more about how to incorporate visual art into my writing practice and into my writing instruction. If I can't get people outside, how can I get them to see pieces, sculptures, video that they might not see otherwise in their sort of ordinary lives?
The natural world is clearly intrinsic to your creative essence, from the blue stones of Lake Michigan to the city-country dichotomy of Austin. What ways do you feel like writers can find similar inspiration from their environments during these times of isolation and unrest?
CC: I just returned from an art residency at Foundation House in Greenwich, Connecticut. Foundation House is on 75 acres of gardens and wilder kind of woodlands where they have these public footpaths that you can take. It's funny because my fellow would occasionally comment, like, "Claire, you're always outside." It's partly because I knew that when I returned to Texas, it would be 99 degrees and I wanted to soak up the New England spring as long as I absolutely could, but it was also because I just needed to get out. I just need to get outside. It's really important to me. When I lived in New York, I was always in parks as much as I could. You know, on a lunch break when I was working in Manhattan, I had a park that I would go to in the kinder weather months. Like, almost every lunch break, I just needed to get outside.
I think that it's important to know where in your vicinity is a little wild place. It doesn't have to be a major preserve; it doesn't have to be a national park; you don't have to go to these places necessarily to feel like you're connecting to nature. You just need to know—especially if you're in an apartment—where is your nearest patch of wildness? It doesn't have to be a literal wild place, it can be a little mini-park. Where is the nearest old tree? You need to touch it. What are the plants that you can have in your house? You need to touch them. Even if you live in a place where it snows half the year, how can you still get out? How can you touch the landscape? You don't have to go around digging up plants that are in other people's yards, but how can you touch the earth? A lot of us learned this in the pandemic that if we just stepped into an outdoor space, it was absolutely life changing. It sounds a little cosmic, but I think it's really important.
The other thing is, if you're absolutely stuck inside, there's all these incredible ambient playlists that you can find now. The Audubon Society has incredible birdscapes that you can listen to. Those make such a difference to your psyche. If you just go to YouTube and you look for forest soundscape, there's this whole cool world of people creating soundscapes that immerse you in a natural setting. That is not the preferred method, but if all you have is the Wi-Fi connection and you absolutely can't get outside, YouTube soundscapes can make such a difference. Plus, you can write to them. I've incorporated some into instruction because a lot of people love that. There's something about that kind of container that is very relaxing. You have this somatic response, but it also just helps you tap into an atmosphere that conjures up different stories that you might not have otherwise.
Many of your workshops and classes center around a nature theme. What is your process for coming up with different themes for your sessions? Especially as a creator of multiple modes of content with your podcast, classes, and writing prompts, how do you decide which mode to use a given topic idea for?
CC: It is not strategic. It is like, what am I working on? What am I wrestling with? Because I'm doing the different modes of content, sometimes it's cool because they'll interweave. Like, I'll do a tarot reading that brings up a question that is very keenly connected to the writing process. Then it becomes less about tarot and more about the artist process.
At one point in my own revision process, I started playing with that as a tool for myself to change things up in my work and I was like, "Yeah, this is cool. Let's share it." And then it'll just be random things that I'll read, or I'll be in therapy and my therapist says, "Let's talk about what it means to just be." And I'm thinking about it in a therapy context, in the sense that I'm thinking about it for my own emotional well-being, but part of my brain is already developing it into a class. I wrote down this phrase on a sticky note from therapy: "Get back to being." And I thought this is perfect for thinking about who you are in the moment as an artist, and bringing in that energy to character development, bringing in that energy for a sense of place.
So, it is random, but it is also borne out of just always being connected to and always thinking about my own process, thinking about what other people have to say about process, and threading those things together. I think the primary root of inspiration is, what am I struggling with in my own process, and what am I trying to hack? At the art residency at Foundation House, because I had the luxury of time and because I had this really sweet kind of container, I was able to really focus on my character's body and part of my brain is also thinking, "Wouldn't this be a cool class? I would love to teach that. How would I do it?” It's probably be borne out of unlocking the challenge that was presented to me as a writer, and the way that I managed to crack a little code here, crack a little code there, and develop it into activities. When you crack a code, you pay attention to how you did it, and then you can reproduce it with a little bit more structure, a little bit more finesse, for a class, or a client, or an individual client.
Those things also go hand in hand. I work with a lot of individual clients on their novels, for example. When I recommend things to my individual clients, I'm thinking about how to tighten up pacing and how to basically lose entire chapters. It's really hard and emotionally exhausting for writers to do all this work and then to have to cut. But you have to do it in a novel-length manuscript. At a certain point, you get to where all your writing is really rich, and you still have to lose it. So, as I'm thinking about how to offer feedback as an individual, I’m also thinking, how could this be a writing activity? How could this be a revision prompt? How could this be a class? So, it’s an infinite loop.
How do you balance your creative process between being an educator and being a writer yourself?
CC: Yeah, I don't. What I've discovered that I need to attempt to strike a balance is other people, and any structures that are determined by somebody other than myself. Especially when you work in consulting, mentoring, teaching, and you're accustomed to always creating that space for other people, I think sometimes it can be hard to relax into your own process.
So, what I do is apply for or sign up for these externally created containers. Somebody else is in charge. It doesn't have to be a thing like a residency that feels quite formal or that you submit a portfolio for, it can be something where a group of friends get together. But I cannot be in charge. I have to just show up. I think this is something for all educators of any kind, when you're so used to holding the space, you have to find ways in which you can just show up and that's all you have to do. And once you show up, you can then create.
Showing up can even be meeting with a writing partner. I'm a writing coach who has a writing coach, to help me with my manuscript. There's something incredibly powerful and magical about simply sending off that piece [to someone else] and releasing it into the world, because, to me, that is striving for balance. When you realize you really can't do it alone... I know some people do most of it alone, but I'm just not motivated that way. That community is pretty key for me. So, I have to reach out and just sign up for shit. In those spaces, I can just be a writer, not a teacher.
I love that you enjoy being in the community as much as creating it. Writing can feel so isolating already, and so being able to share and sometimes commiserate can feel good and invigorating.
CC: It's really vulnerable. It shores you up and it cracks you open simultaneously. I just recorded this podcast episode at the residency where I realized that the most extraordinary thing about a retreat, a residency, a workshop, is less that you are incredibly productive, and more that you're able to take risks. I think there's something about being in community that helps you try things out, because when you do it in the company of other people, or when you share it with other people, and then you survive, and you realize it did not destroy you to take the risk and then to share the product of the risk, it encourages you to keep doing that. Being in community, for me, is both about affirming that I should keep doing what I'm doing, that it's not crazy or ridiculous, but also that I can keep changing it, that I can keep taking risks, and doing things that might not work. Just keep making mistakes.
Speaking of your podcast, what led you into folding tarot into your literary entrepreneurship?
CC: Pandemic again, for the podcast. For the tarot, I started collaborating with Cecily Sailer five or six years ago, and I was really interested in tarot as a tool for the writing process. I started reading it for my own personal life and my own well-being. Then I started reading for other people and it was something I would do at retreats. It was something that I would do in person, but then, suddenly, in the pandemic and when I started teaching remotely through my website, I had clients all over the country who were interested. It's definitely a small portion of what I do, but it's growing. As anything, I was skeptical about teaching writing and writing workshops online. It works. You can make it work. I was skeptical about reading tarot online. It works. You can make it work. As I've learned that it can be done and is actually really great online, it's something that I definitely want to expand.
Then, the podcast was one of these things in the pandemic that—like I talked about with sort of weaving these threads together from the writing process and working with clients—I started thinking about all these little narratives that spring up with the cards and how they can help with the artist's process, and how that can also inspire guided writing. Why not do them together? It was also the opportunity to connect with other artists remotely because I could interview folks and get some inspiration for myself.
Last but not least, what are you reading right now? What writers are exciting to you right now?
CC: I'm actually reading a memoir by my MFA thesis mentor, Rachel Cohen. Her memoir is called Austen Years, which is about this time in her life where there was a lot of upheaval. She lost a parent to cancer. She had a child. She was moving. All these things were changing in her life, and she found that she really only felt like reading Jane Austen novels. Rachel Cohen is this incredibly, voracious, omnivorous reader, who writes a lot about reading and writes a lot about the work of authors and artists. This is her bread and butter. So, it's interesting, knowing her, knowing how she taught, and how she's evolved her way of both reading and thinking about writing creative nonfiction. It feels like such a gift when you find a book like this.
I'm really excited about it because, having read Jane Austen myself and really knowing all the characters, I love the opportunity to just hone in on one character and one world through the eyes of the author. What Rachel will do is she'll talk about her life and then talk about, say, Pride and Prejudice, and unveil all these really interesting tidbits about Jane Austen's life. For example, we see Austen maybe writing in a cottage, on an estate, in silence. Actually, she was constantly surrounded by people, and she was constantly taking care of others before she got ill. It's cracking a lot of things open for me in the way that I see this author whom I love, but it's also cracking a lot of things open in the way that I see this mentor.
When I studied with Rachel at Sarah Lawrence, she talked about memoir writing as being this more externally focused thing, in the sense that you're critiquing something and it's more about the subject than it is about yourself. In this new memoir, she's talking about how her view has changed and she's actually diving into her really intimate experience with her relationships with her spouse, children, and her father. She's offering this incredibly personal experience that it sounds like she never thought she would do. What's cool about reading that is that you realize your writing life is a long and ever-changing one, and there's going to be phases that you can't expect. You're going to write things that you can't even imagine. You're going to go through reading phases that really surprise you but change the way that you write. There are projects that you haven't even dreamed of that are on the horizon.
I have on the shelf, waiting, Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James. I feel like he's known for fantasy novels that subvert the traditional white European worlds that maybe folks associate with a fantasy novel. People talk about it as being an African Game of Thrones, which I know is unfortunate because it can be its own thing, but I think that's important because it's this epic fantasy that is this sort of mythic version of Africa, as opposed to this white European landscape peopled by white Europeans. So, that's next for me to read when I finish the memoir.
I also just read For the Wolf by Hannah Whitten, which is this crazy, kind of romantic, forest magic novel. It's sort of a subverted fairy tale, which is a fun adventure.
This interview has been edited for length, style, and clarity.
Thank you so much for talking with me, Claire!
-Kylie