What would happen if the Earth’s rotation began to slow? Or if a sleep-inducing virus spread among the population?

New York Times bestselling author Karen Thompson Walker enjoys placing realistic human characters into not-quite-real situations to see what might happen. All her books have a premise that somehow breaks the rules of reality as we understand it.

“Reality is full of uncanny mysteries, territory that science has not yet fully illuminated, from quantum physics to human consciousness,” says the associate professor of creative writing in the College of Arts and Sciences. Her work falls within the spectrum of what she calls “soft science fiction,” or speculative fiction.

“I like to use science fiction elements in my novels as a way of imaginatively exploring  unknown, or even unknowable, territory.”

Walker not only pursues this exploration on the page—her upcoming third novel, The Strange Case of Jane O., is a speculative mystery about a new mother who starts to experience strange hallucinations and premonitions—but she also incorporates it into her classroom, where her primary teaching focus is on fiction with a catastrophic or fantastical element.

Teaching to write

Walker began writing her first novel, The Age of Miracles, while working for a book publisher.

After earning her undergraduate degrees in English and creative writing at University of California, LA, and her master’s at Columbia University, she got a job as an editorial assistant at Simon and Schuster and worked her way up to an entry-level editor position.

During this time, she would get up early in the morning to write before helping her boss review other people's novels during the day.

—Karen Thompson Walker, creative writing professor

After publishing her first novel in 2012, she decided that teaching creative writing would allow her more time to work on her own books.

“It's a really wonderful balance for a writer to be a professor,” she says.

She eventually landed in the UO Creative Writing Program—a natural fit, since her father is from Oregon and graduated from the university in 1966.

“I spent a lot of time in the state as a kid, and so it felt like a homecoming to get to do this job in a place that I love,” she says.

Learning from her students

Walker came to teaching with the idea that it would support her career as a novelist. What she didn’t expect was how much her students would impact her writing.

Her students, she says, have played an important role in her own writing career, leading her in unexpected directions or helping her think things through in a different way.

“I really feel like teaching at the University of Oregon has opened up new corners in my brain,” she says.

One of the ways Walker connects with her students is through a summer study abroad program she co-founded for intermediate to advanced undergraduate fiction writers. She has twice taken groups of UO students to Siena, Italy, to study creative writing. She and her partner, Casey Walker, will run this summer’s program in Oviedo, Spain. Participating students closely examine different aspects of writing, language and the role of a story’s setting through a series of place-based writing exercises inspired by these unique cities.

A handful of Walker’s students have published their own books, including three graduates of UO’s Creative Writing Master of Fine Arts program: Claire Luchette, author of Agatha of Little Neon; Morgan Thomas, author of Manywhere; Nicky Gonzalez, author of Mayra, which comes out in July; and Mariah Rigg, author of Extinction Capital of the World, which comes out in August.

“I certainly can't take credit for their successes, but one of the pleasures of teaching at the University of Oregon has been getting to watch my students evolve and develop as writers, and to see some of them find wide audiences for their work,” Walker says. “We have really talented grad students, and it's gratifying to see their stories arrive in bookstores.”

Meet Jane O. 

As part of the UO Creative Writing Reading Series, Karen Thompson Walker will read from and discuss her new book, The Strange Case of Jane O., on March 12 at 4:30 p.m. in the Knight Library browsing room. The event is free and open to the public. 

Explore the Reading Series

 

An experimental approach to writing

Walker’s goal as a writer is not only to keep evolving and growing in her skills, but also to keep challenging herself with her work.

In addition to bending the rules of reality, she has played with many types of perspectives in each of her books, and she wants to continue to try new things. For example, in The Strange Case of Jane O., due out Feb. 25, she experiments with having two narrators.

“With two narrators there's this chance you're getting slightly different information at different times,” she says. “You start to wonder, is one unreliable? Are they both unreliable? There is this kind of instability in points of view when things don't match up.”

Walker’s advice to aspiring writers is to read as much as possible, because it allows you to see things done by writers that you may not have thought of or didn’t realize were possible.

—By Kendall Baldwin, College of Arts and Sciences