‘What would Keeble do?’: Latest short story collection just small part of sprawling creative writing career for educator, poet and author John Keeble

When the Exxon Valdez dumped more than 10 million gallons of oil into the Prince William Sound, “Yellowfish” author John Keeble received a call from his then-Harper & Row editor Ted Solotaroff asking Keeble to cover the spill.

At the time, Keeble was the program director for the master of fine arts in creative writing at Eastern Washington University, a program he transformed from a one-year masters into Washington state’s first creative writing MFA program in 1978. All the books he’d published at the time had been fiction, and Cordova was well over a thousand miles away. But the research he’d put into “Yellowfish” had prepared him for an assignment like this, and the opportunity was too much to pass up. Keeble packed his bags.

“It was a big story that obviously touched me, something was really horrible about it,” Keeble said. “… You’re on the edge of the water, and all you can see with it is oil, is black, and all the birds are covered with oil, and the otters are covered with oil.”

From this research came the Pulitzer-nominated essay “Black Spring in Valdez,” published in the Village Voice, and his first nonfiction book, “Out of the Channel: The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill in Prince William Sound,” but all work following the spill wore its mark, including his latest short story collection, “Transfigurations,” which prominently features the West and two stories set in Alaska, as well as “Synchronicity,” which won the O. Henry Award.

Keeble dedicated this book to David Grimes, the man who took Keeble out on his boat to research the spill, writing, “my friend and a traveler in air, on land, and on the water, a constant seeker, and a willing witness to the interstices of everything seen and heard. I learned from him and owe him my gratitude.”

On March 19, Keeble and Chris Howell – poet and Lynx House Press publisher – will be in conversation with authors Jess Walter and Sam Ligon at West Central Abbey. With “Transfigurations” as its most recent title, Lynx House Press is celebrating 50 years, with over 250 titles. The evening will celebrate both Keeble and Howell’s literary footprint in the region and beyond, in their published work, teaching, mentorship and book publishing.

Keeble met Walter when he enrolled in Keeble’s graduate creative writing class. Walter described himself as an ambitious undergrad. He was already working for The Spokesman-Review, and after taking undergraduate creative writing classes, he asked his teacher at the time, author Ursula Hegi, if he could take graduate-level classes. He ended up taking a class from both Hegi and Keeble.

“Even then, I read ‘Yellowfish’ because I was like, ‘Wow, I’m taking a class from someone who has a novel out in the world,’ and very much the kind of novel that I like, that is steeped in place, but also has these elements of suspense,” Walter said.

Though not his first novel (that was “Crab Canon,” published in 1971), Keeble acknowledges that “Yellowfish” (published in 1980) was the first book of his that was a major success. By then, Keeble was settled with his wife, Claire Keeble, and children in Spokane, living in the house he built with his brother on over 200 acres of land. Much of John’s life thus far can be understood through the lens of his love of the West and the natural world.

“Before it was very popular to do so, he was rewriting the Western landscape and interiority of women and men and all intersectionality across the West,” author Shann Ray Ferch said.

The philosopher and his alligator

Born in Canada, John moved to California at a young age. Though he doesn’t have many memories of Canada, the short story “Chickens,” in his first short story collection, “Nocturnal America” borrows from that time, set in Saskatchewan.

“Snow drifted to the bottoms of the windows,” John wrote. “Only the upper walls and roofs of the buildings were visible. The earth was covered with snow, which the wind blew up against whatever would stop it.”

John’s father was a Congregationalist minister, and John attended church twice a week. In the 1950s, the church assigned his father to lead a congregation in National City, California, next to San Diego.

“My father was particularly assigned to this church because it was thought by the denomination to be in trouble, and he started hiring,” John said. “He hired a Chinese guy to direct the choir and a Black soloist, which caused more people to leave. They didn’t like it, and eventually the church just revolutionized itself and became more of an open church.”

In his home in National City, over the fence was a vacant field, and from their windows, the family could see the ocean. They took trips to the desert on the weekend, went to National Parks for vacations, and took regular trips to Saratoga Spring in Death Valley National Park.

A violinist, John received a scholarship to attend University of Redlands. He was quickly introduced to Claire, who played both violin and viola.

“It was outside what was called the commons, where we ate our food at the University of Redlands, and I remember the sidewalk, and there she was,” John said.

“For me, it was right away,” John said, Claire laughing. “Her, took a little time.”

“I really adored him right away, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to settle my life,” Claire said.

Claire was two years older, and when she graduated, they married. By then, John had switched his major to English.

Their first residence was “a duplex beneath a freeway on a curb with trucks screaming around 24/7,” Claire said, describing it as a “deadening” way to start their marriage. So, they went house-hunting and found a shack in Mentone, California, on a rural property next to a Swiss man who had “an amazing menagerie of animals collected from all over the world in cages all over his property,” Claire said. “And this is cactus country. He had an alligator next to his front step. And it apparently never bothered anybody.”

Claire said this living situation set the tone for their marriage, which has celebrated 62 years.

‘Goodnight Irene’

After graduation, John was admitted to Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the oldest creative writing program in the country, and regularly ranked the top program. There, he studied under William “Bill” Murray, took a class from Robert Coover, and was classmates with Flannery O’Connor.

“This woman that sat in the back and didn’t say a thing,” John said of O’Connor. “We occasionally saw a story she’d written. They were really good.”

John benefited from Murray’s mentorship, and published portions of his first book, “Crab Canon,” while he was a student. But the environment could be cutthroat and ruthless, and he vowed to do things differently if he ever taught a class.

Still, classmates would gather at a tavern after class. Their regular spot was owned by a woman named Irene, and they sang “Goodnight, Irene” to her at closing time.

In the story “Waiting for Dick to Die” in “Transfigurations,” John wrote, “Crazy Larry appeared in the entryway in his soiled overalls and sweatshirt, gripping one of his plastic bags by the throat. He removed the cap from his head, revealing his unkempt whorl of hair. He grinned. He had a tooth missing in front, a large gap there. ‘Irene,’ he said. He started in on his favorite song, Goodnight Irene.”

After graduating, Keeble took a position teaching at Grinnell College, also in Iowa. There, he had Michelle Huneven as a student in his creative writing class.

“He was the young, hip creative writing teacher. He was pretty much fresh out of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and he had all sorts of new, fun, experimental ideas,” Huneven said. Huneven, who played the viola, was also a student of Claire’s. She went to live with John and Claire, in exchange for occasionally babysitting their son. There, she learned of John’s discipline as a writer.

Huneven has published six books, including “Blame,” which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

“When I finally began writing novels, I thought I know how to write novels from John Keeble,” she said. “You just show up every day and it accumulates.”

Huneven ended up dropping out of Grinnell for a year “to become a hippie in North Carolina with my boyfriend,” she said. (She later transferred to EWU to finish her degree.) The Keebles went to Brown University for John to pursue a PhD. But the family missed the West Coast, and when a position at Eastern Washington University became available, Keeble jumped at it.

When John arrived in Spokane in 1974, he settled in the Four Lakes community. Poet Jim McAuley was running the creative writing program, which was a one-year master’s. In 1998, Dan Webster of The Spokesman-Review reported, “It is Keeble who took over when McAuley was too angry (not his exact words) at the state to do the actual application that would win the school its MFA program. McAuley’s judgment: ‘He did a wonderful job.’”

At this point, John took on the role as program director. The desire to create an MFA program was simple: Students needed longer than a year to complete significant creative work.

During the same time he was shaping the MFA program, John was building his house. He’d purchased over 200 acres, and was building on the land with his brother. The MA officially became an MFA in 1978, and he moved into his new home.

WWKD

Keeble continued to write, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1982. Many students came to him referred by others. A University of Iowa professor named Wayne Johnson told Jon Billman to study under Keeble. The EWU MFA program was also how Billman met his wife, Hilary, whose undergraduate thesis adviser told her about Keeble; he’d worked with him at University of Alabama, where Keeble was a visiting professor on a few occasions. Stefani Farris was working for Wyoming Humanities, and the Billmans were on the board.

“They were like, if you are wanting to stay out West, you should absolutely look at Eastern Washington,” Farris said. “John Keeble is there.”

Farris read his story, “The Chasm,” which was originally published in Prairie Schooner, and selected for the 1994 Best American Short Stories.

“I just remember that story blew me away,” Farris said. “And I was like, ‘Oh, this will be great if I get to study with this person.’ ”

Farris, whose short story collection “Nothing is Precious” was published as the John Keeble Series of Rural American Writing for Willow Springs Books, located her journals from her time in the MFA program.

On March 30, 2004, she wrote, “Hmm. So close. There, really. Just a few things. How am I going to do this without John? The things he reveals, the way he gets right to the heart of the stories and elucidates the exact thing I haven’t been able to figure out.”

Farris said that John gave her the confidence to be able to refine her own work.

“His voice remains in my head, his critical eye,” Farris said. “Not critical in the sense of negative, but sort of his standards and his close, attentive reading.”

Billman said when he’s not sure what to do with his writing, he just thinks “WWKD: What would Keeble do?” Billman is an English professor at Northern Michigan University.

“He’s such a vital part of my life,” Billman said. “I mean, I owe my career to him. There’s not hardly an hour goes by when I’m writing that I don’t think about him.”

What stuck out to Shawn Vestal, former Spokesman-Review columnist and EWU creative writing program graduate, was how Keeble conducted his workshops. A dynamic had been developing in Vestal’s cohort where “people would jump on each other’s work.”

“He just quietly right before break in class just said, ‘I want you guys to think about how you’re treating each other like you seem to be displaying contempt for each other, and that’s the very last thing you should be doing,’ ” Vestal said.

Vestal said those words affected him and his process.

Student/teacher

In the early 1990s, John encouraged Nance Van Winckel to apply for a faculty position. She originally enrolled in the program as a poetry student in the early ’70s, but had transferred to University of Denver, where they offered her a graduate assistantship working on Denver Quarterly, the literary journal run by that program.

She was offered the EWU position, as well as the role of editor of Willow Springs Magazine (established in 1977), due to her experience at the other literary journal. She created a new program for the MFA: Writers in the Community. With Writers in the Community, MFA students teach creative writing to different groups – schools, assisted living homes, prisons, mental health facilities and more.

“Schools would ask me, and I had done this in graduate school myself, so I was up for it, and I would usually take along some students from the program,” Van Winckel said. “And then I was getting more and more calls.”

So, they formalized it. The program was a win-win, because graduate students received invaluable teaching experience, as well, Van Winckel said.

Van Winckel had already met someone else who was going to be crucial to the development of the program: Howell. Before coming to EWU to teach, she had taught at a small college in Kansas. At a writing conference, she heard Howell reading his poetry.

When a position opened at EWU, she encouraged him to apply. She knew returning West was important to him, to live closer to his daughter, Emma Howell.

“I was just knocked out by his poems,” Van Winckel said. “Totally knocked out. I just thought, ‘Oh my god, this guy is an amazing poet,’ and I still feel the same way.”