Ethan Knox

By Ethan Knox (Photo credit: Jaimee Wriston-Colbert)

 “The town I live in, Jody’s home town, is on the Susquehanna, cited as one of America’s most endangered rivers—we’re talking raw sewage, animal carcasses, fertilizer run-off, industrial chemicals, human sludge…”

Sentences like these infuse the fictionalized Southern Tier within the linked “rural-noir” stories of Wild Things, Jaimee Wriston Colbert’s fifth published work. But New York is far from her only subject. From drug addiction to climate change, in locales as diverse as Rock Harbor, Maine and Oahu, Hawaii, Colbert brings her life experience to her writing—and to her classroom at Binghamton University.

As a guide to new writers, Colbert urges the students who pass through her classes to pursue their creative interests and remain steadfast in their dedication to the craft.

“I would hope both by example and conversations that might occur in my classes to foster the sense that it’s important anyway. Even if one doesn’t become a writer, it’s still a worthwhile thing to do,” Colbert said. “One should have a certain amount of joy out of it, but at the same time realize that if they really do want to pursue it, it takes tenacity. It takes being willing to be rejected a lot.”

Colbert, a native of Honolulu, Hawaii, is the author of six books of fiction. A graduate of Brown University and the University of Washington, Colbert has lived in many of the places she writes about, including Maine and the Midwest. For the past 18 years, Colbert has taught as a professor of English and creative writing at Binghamton University.

After tenure and numerous awards, however, Colbert still expresses wonder at the creative process and the way it shapes even her most active days as a professor.

“I was sitting, finishing breakfast, and suddenly I started thinking about an idea for a story. And I just told myself, ‘All right, file it away, a couple of brain cells somewhere will hold on to it when I have time.’ But then I thought, ‘No, it doesn’t work that way. You either write something down or you’re going to forget it.’ And so, I finished my oatmeal while I was kind of scrambling down this idea for a story,” said Colbert, laughing at the memory. “Creativity is an interesting thing. An idea will come… you don’t even know where or why it popped into your head. You just know you have to follow it at some point.”

Colbert said that although she was always an avid reader and enjoyed writing, she wanted to become a teacher or an anthropologist when she was growing up. It wasn’t until high school and college that her professors encouraged and cemented her understanding that writing could go hand-in-hand with scholarship.

The care of those who came before her, and a love for the natural world, now translates into a philosophy she tries to impart to her pupils.

“I would tell serious students who really love writing: ‘If you wanted to pursue it in any sort of way and felt just defeated, that’s it. You never give up. You have to keep pressing on and you have to believe in your work and at the same time be willing at every turn to revise it,’” Colbert said. “‘Go forth as one must and do as little harm as possible.’”

This theme is also present in her writing. She cites growing up in Hawaii as one reason she finds inspiration in nature; some of her strongest works, she said, came to her while hiking. She imbues her creative work with the science of environment and place. It also brought her to some of her favorite authors—Flannery O’Connor, Toni Morrison and Bonnie Jo Campbell. All of these authors include a strong sense of atmosphere and character in their writing, Colbert said.

Colbert’s love for reading comes across in her classes, too. She stresses assigned readings, especially as she finds that students are coming to college “not reading enough.” With increased competition in the writing world, she feels it’s her prerogative to give students a base knowledge of established authors.

Michael Rodriguez, a senior majoring in English and graduating this fall, is taking “Intermediate Fiction Workshop” with Colbert. He plans to apply for her advanced workshop, too.

“Through the class, we read a variety of authors I honestly probably wouldn’t have ever read,” Rodriguez said. “She exposed me to their writing styles, while breaking down how they each wrote different stories—but used the same tools, employing them differently. As a writer, pretty much everything she said about characterization, gestures, exposition and dialogue have influenced how I approach my stories.”

Although Colbert could be called an expert in her field, she said she often still finds lessons throughout her work. One of these lessons took her whole career to discover, but it is something she stands by today.

“When you first start out there is a fear. ‘Will you ever be noticed?’ Will you make it—whatever is defined by making it? I mean, when you’re first starting out, that first published story is a really big deal, and you feel like you’ve arrived, and then you don’t get another one for five years,” Colbert said. “You learn to not fear, even though it’s not pleasant to go through those periods of time where it feels like you’re just sort of throwing things into the wind and they’re flying back.”

She continued, her authority over the subject clear: “I used to fear that particularly working on a novel, which is a lot of effort, it wouldn’t come together, and I would have to abandon it, but now I realize that it’s just part of the process. That will happen and you can’t fear it,” said Colbert, reflecting on her decades-long career.

“If there’s still something in a piece that interests you, if you keep working on it, eventually you find the right way to tell it.”