Get to know our faculty: Cassie Gonzales
Cassie Gonzales’s roles for SWF20 include teaching the breakout session entitled “Writing powerful female characters” and directing the inaugural Stockholm Writers Prize. Her prose has been Pushcart nominated and published in print and online by The Kenyon Review, Tin House, Ploughshares, and Granta, among others. Her drama has been shortlisted by the BBC and staged by The University of Iowa. She has taught creative writing to undergraduates and postgraduates. Cassie has a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Oxford and is currently a PhD candidate in creative/critical writing at the University of East Anglia.
Cassie discusses the Prize and its focus on social-justice themed creative writing, and why the topic covered by her breakout session is so essential to writing — and society.
What makes you most proud to direct the Stockholm Writers Prize?
I am so delighted to recognize and support a writer who is changing the world with their art. Writing is such a solitary activity and it can take years for a writer to admit to themselves, much less to another person, that they believe in their art, and they believe their art has the ability to change minds, and therefore, to change the world. I want our prize to reach into the solitary little bubbles that so many emerging writers occupy and to let them know that we see their effort, we value their work, and we believe in their art.
What’s a special power that creative writing brings to addressing social justice issues?
Empathy. Great writing is an empathy machine. A story well told, a poem with impact, a scene fully realized – those all connect the heart of the reader to the heart of the writer. I sincerely feel that being fully immersed in great writing is the closet any of us can ever come to really knowing the experience of another person. It is that intimate, heart-to-heart connection which broadens the readers’ way of seeing, and, hopefully, creates new ways of caring, and new ways of being.
With the award being a residency, how much have residencies benefited your writing?
The prize for the first big writing award I won was a six-day residency at the Kenyon Review’s Summer Writers’ Workshop. I was so delighted to have won, but honestly, I was incredulous about how much of an impact six days could make on me. It was transformative. I now think of that week as a major turning point in my writing life. I gained so much perspective on my craft, on my process, and the meaning behind my art. I hope that, in some small way, this prize will give a similar experience to another writer.
How have you explored social justice in your writing?
Absolutely! I don’t usually start the writing process with a particular social justice theme in mind, but often, in revision, I realize my story is actually trying to make a bigger statement about something. The difficulties are, I think, being brave enough to embrace the story’s meaning, being confident enough to write with subtlety, and being humble enough to completely trust your reader.
With your SWF20 breakout, why do tropes about women continue to persist, even in this #MeToo era?
Though this has certainly been a groundbreaking year for women, we still have work to do to detangle all of the underwhelming (Frustrating! Harmful! Shallow!) ways women are portrayed. The narratives we read and watched as children, as teens, and as adults have so fundamentally shaped the way we see real women in the world that we often do not realize how much these narratives underpin our real-world interactions – and that we’re reproducing these narratives in our own writing. The breakout session I’m offering will help writers to identify those problematic narratives in their own work, and then will provide them with tools to complicate and deepen their portrayals of women.
In teaching writing, what’s something you’ve learned from your students?
So many of my students are brave, vulnerable, shameless, and humble - they make big choices, big mistakes, and put all of themselves into their art. I have cried, laughed, scoffed, and been endlessly delighted by the strange, honest, close-to-the-bone writing of so many of my students. I am so grateful every time I get to work with new writers because they bring me back to the fundamentals: feelings, urgency, and voice.
Learn more about Cassie on her website: cassiegonzales.com.