Writers Are the Gatekeepers of Information

Reflecting on her childhood, Katrina Prow ties her early dance performances to an interest in storytelling. Add to that, the weekly trips to the public library in Santa Maria, Calif., which brought value to reading and curating an imagination.

“I loved fairytales and mythology—stories that explained why things were as they were,” Katrina tells me. “I suppose that was all great narrative training, thinking about plots and character motivations through stories.”

The crossover between telling stories on paper and through dance was natural, and both eventually led to her becoming an esteemed instructor in our Certificate Program in Creative Writing.

“My practice in performing arts was excellent preparation for teaching, which is mostly people skills, creative problem-solving and clear delivery of concepts,” she adds.

A Shift to Writing 

The spark for writing occurred during her undergraduate studies at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB).

Needing to fulfill an arts credit elective, Katrina signed up for an introduction to poetry workshop. “One of the poetry collections we studied was Music Through the Floor, by Long Beach writer David Hernandez,” she says.

“I loved the collection so much that I signed up to take a nonfiction workshop taught by David’s wife, Lisa Glatt, hoping that I might have the chance to meet the poet if I studied with his wife. Lisa’s class changed my life. She was the first writer to take my work seriously; she believed in me. By the end of Lisa’s class, I had changed my major to creative writing, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

That relationship with Glatt, who became her mentor, continued on to Katrina’s M.F.A. program.

“Two more years writing fiction with Lisa felt like a dream come true!” Katrina recalls. “Those years provided more exposure to theory, literature and craft methodology and helped me find my material in short fiction.

“Go Bang was a collection of stories I wrote during my time in the M.F.A. program, but you can see glimmers of the themes I still write about today: women, restaurants, relationships, the working class. While most of those stories only live in that thesis collection, I recently resuscitated one of the stories, ‘Giraffe Girl,’ with a major revision, and I’ve been submitting it to literary journals.”

“I see revision as an instrumental part in finding a new direction for a draft and remaining open to the writing process.”

Personal Educational Experiences Influence Own Teaching

Two years after her M.F.A. program, Katrina decided to apply for Ph.D. programs in English with an emphasis in creative writing.

“I was waitlisted for two programs,” she says, “and when I was ultimately accepted to Texas Tech University (TTU), I could not turn down the generous funding offer which included the Helen DeVitt Jones Fellowship, named for a humanitarian, education and arts activist from one of the early ranching families in West Texas. I was also a Teaching Effectiveness and Career Enhancement (TEACH) Fellow during the fourth year of my doctoral degree. This interdisciplinary fellowship allowed extra concentration on my pedagogy in preparation for a teaching position upon graduation.”

Katrina’s experiences with mentorship from great instructors have come to influence her own methods for teaching today.

“These writers taught me that my work was valuable; they took my writing seriously, and their belief in my work meant that I had to believe in myself, too,” she says.

Going to the “unfamiliar” in her Ph.D. experience, Katrina also learned how to advocate for herself and her writing. “I left that program a much stronger writer because I had been challenged to rethink everything I was doing in my fiction. By my third year of study, TTU hired Katie Cortese in their fiction program, and her thoughtful, focused notes helped me rewrite several parts of my novel that were stuck.

“Today I treat all writing shared in workshop seriously,” she says. “It's important to show students that their creative work and their ideas are valuable. I approach every manuscript with care, and I respond to every student's work with enthusiasm. My approach is a blend of what I have learned: compassion for student work and in-depth commentary to help students achieve their writing goals.”

Katrina says in both workshop experiences, her instructors placed an importance on revision—something that’s not really discussed as a tangible concept in class—and often seen as a dreaded editorial task. “Now, I see revision as an instrumental part in finding a new direction for a draft and remaining open to the writing process.

“As a writer, I've learned that my best work happens during revision,” she continues, “so I'm passionate about discussing and demystifying that part of the writing process. I have developed several revision-specific writing prompts to aid students in their own work, and I share a few craft essays about revision techniques during the term to inspire new work.”

What Katrina learned in her post-secondary education continues to be reflected in the courses she teaches in our writing certificate. Topics including the American short story, feminist literature, post-modern theory and craft of writing all create a foundation in her approach to reading, writing and craft. Her Ph.D. research in experimental narrative structures and composite novels also informs this work.

“I’m very interested in experimentation and hybrid writing forms, which comes from a post-modern approach to crafting fiction, and I still love the short story over any other genre,” she tells me. “As a writer and instructor, everything that I create comes from a feminist framework. All these philosophies are things that I was exposed to during my undergrad and in my M.F.A.

“In my classes, I prioritize texts written by people of color, women, disabled and LGBTQIA+ writers, steering away from a traditional canon-heavy reading list. I want students to see themselves represented in the work we read and to understand that identity does not determine their potential as writers. This approach reflects my commitment to decolonizing creative writing pedagogy and offering students access to literature that reflects both their lived experiences and the current literary landscape.”

“My approach is a blend of what I have learned: compassion for student work and in-depth commentary to help students achieve their writing goals.”

From Short Stories to Developing a Novel

Excerpts from Katrina’s short story collection have been published in a variety of literary reviews and journals, including Off Assignment, The Boston Review, March Xness, Emerald City Literary Magazine, Taco Bell Quarterly, decomP, The Journal, Pithead Chapel, Redivider, Passages North and elsewhere.

“I predominately write short-form fiction and nonfiction,” she explains. “Most of the publications on this list are short fiction excerpts from my novel-in-stories about the restaurant industry or other flash fiction publications. I also write creative nonfiction essays about public discourse around popular music, personal memory and nostalgia. These publications come from an essay collection in progress.”

In addition to those published works, she recently completed her first novel, We Are Always at a Bar, based on her dissertation. She is seeking representation for this project, and according to her website: “The book orbits the experience of two waitresses and draws on much of her personal experience in the restaurant industry after over 20 years working in hospitality.”

“My novel began as a collection of stories about working in hospitality,” she says, ”and while it is a book of fiction, almost everything written has a very real seed of inspiration, either from my own experiences in the service industry or from my coworkers. As a hospitality professional, I never saw myself in any of the fiction I studied, apart from side characters, often unnamed waiters and waitresses in service of the main character in the scene.

“Working in hospitality has changed the way I move through the world, the way I think about conflict, pressure, urgency and motivation. As a participant in these spaces, I have witnessed stories happening all around me at once, and the teamwork of a busy night started to feel like a narrative I could write. As the designated writer on staff, my coworkers began to unearth their secrets: ‘You should write this down,’ they told me, or, ‘I’ll give you something for your book.’

“I didn’t realize I was writing a novel until I set these stories and vignettes next to each other, noticing a narrative thread of women in service roles experiencing episodes of addiction, sexism and domestic pressure,” she continues. “After I had pieced together a full draft, I realized that it was just fragments of restaurant stories without a throughline. And while the fragmentation of the work mimicked the structure of a shift, where everyone participates separately to create a composed night of service, I didn’t have a plot.”

Taking inspiration from both Merritt Tierce’s novel Love Me Back, and Jennifer Egan’s novel A Visit From the Goon Squad, Katrina reshaped her fragmented stories around the steps of service: a regimented process one follows during a serving shift.

“Guided by the motto I had to memorize at one restaurant and recite each day at lineup—’We are guest first and we strive to make a human connection’—I had a plot line, characters who put orders before themselves to their own eventual demise,” she says.

Katrina uses her own writing struggles as teachable moments to help her students who may feel stuck in their own drafts.

Helping You Craft Your Story

“So many students enroll in Developing the Novel with a really firm idea of what they want to do: detailed outlines, character sketches, fully developed plots,” Katrina relates.

“This is the opposite approach of the one I took, and while there is no right or wrong way to craft a novel, I think it’s important to remain flexible to the story and to allow for moments of surprise. It’s an old writerly saying, but if you aren’t surprised by the writing you are doing, then the reader won’t feel the surprise either.”

She adds, “Sometimes over-preparation halts imagination. My advice is to always stay open! You don't have to start at the start.”

In our Developing the Novel course, each session includes a lecture on craft, supported by discussion of assigned readings and exercises to unlock the potential of your ideas. Students learn how to develop characters, language, voice, pace, tone, theme and setting, and participate in a group critique of their work.

“One part of the curriculum that I really like is that students read and analyze a novel of their choice before they write their own,” Katrina explains.

“Reading other novels about the restaurant industry and other workplaces completely helped me solve the plot for my own novel. More importantly, this research helped me understand the market for novels about work and the contemporary working class. I realized there was a huge hole in books about restaurants from a front of the house perspective, which motivated me to write my own.”

Since joining our Certificate Program in Creative Writing in 2023, in addition to Developing the Novel, Katrina has taught: 

• Intermediate Fiction Writing
• The Craft of Writing
• Developing the Memoir
• Contemporary Voices: Speaking From the Margins

While every course is different, there is one consistent: Katrina is constantly impressed by the level of enthusiasm from our students.

“They are so engaged, even during an evening lecture, after attending to their own jobs and worlds,” she lauds. “We have the best conversations in class, and I’ve been incredibly moved by the level of writing, even from students who are just beginning their journeys as writers. Their hearts bleed for this work, and I feel grateful that they trust me with their words!”

She also acknowledges that part of the teaching process is being inspired by—and learning from—your students. “Because I am sometimes the youngest person in the room, I learn infinitely from our students: their diverse backgrounds and life experiences. These vibrant stories and their fortitude to keep writing—despite, despite, despite—is incredibly inspiring.”