Episode 6 | Ian Williams

Parallel Careers

"I think it's really important, even if you are not, you know, not gonna be a writer, to still acknowledge that you have right to creative production. There's nothing that says that you have to stop drawing or, or painting after middle school or high school. Celebrate your capacity to make something out of nothing."
In this episode, Ian Williams discusses tackling complicated ethical issues in his writing and finding ways to maintain lifelong creativity.

He discusses:

0:50 | Examining thorny moral and ethical questions through a mathematical model in his poetry collection Word Problems

5:10 | Sticking his poems on the wall and the point in the writing process where he “surrenders to the work,” giving it precedence over the comfort of closure

6:45 | Asking his students to write every day and how he adapts the assignment to different course levels

8:33| His essay collection Disorientation, about what it feels like to be a Black man moving through the world, and writing directly to the reader without the filter of fiction

13:00 | Taking his book draft out to dinner and the importance of recovering joy in the writing process

16:41 | Accruing a character through a repertoire of physical gestures

18:29 | Decentring the “I” by asking students to write an autobiographical poem without any people or pronouns in it

20:20 | Why it’s critical to make plans for our creative lives and how creativity is not a failure because it's a part of your life rather than all of your life
Guest bio:

Ian Williams is the author of six books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. His latest book, Disorientation, considers the impact of racial encounters on ordinary people.

His novel, Reproduction, won the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was published in Canada, the US, the UK, and Italy. His poetry collection, Word Problems, converts the ethical and political issues of our time into math and grammar problems. It won the Raymond Souster Award. His previous collection, Personals, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Robert Kroetsch Poetry Book Award. His short story collection, Not Anyone’s Anything, won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award for the best first collection of short fiction in Canada. His first book, You Know Who You Are, was a finalist for the ReLit Poetry Prize. He is a trustee for the Griffin Poetry Prize.

Williams completed his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto. After several years teaching poetry in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia, Williams returned to the University of Toronto as a tenured professor of English. He was the 2014-2015 Canadian Writer-in-Residence for the University of Calgary’s Distinguished Writers Program. In 2022, he will be the Visiting Fellow at the American Library in Paris.
About the Podcast:

Parallel Careers is a monthly podcast about the dual lives of writers who teach.

Few writers make their living from publication alone; many fill the gaps with teaching in both academic and community settings. Much of the work is precarious, and there are few opportunities for professional development.

Parallel Careers features writers with diverse practices and points of view—writers who are at the top of their game in both craft and pedagogy. Tune in to hear the big ideas and pract