Twenty-nine. Six-foot-two, eyes of blue. Wavy light brown hair,
recently cut from just-short-of-ponytail length to something more
corporate. Short beard--really more of a goatee with sideburns
that attach. Round, black wire-rimmed glasses.
One side of my family is Chesapeake watermen, the other side
Appalachian lumber & construction workers. My parents met at art
school in Richmond, VA, and stayed there, making my little
brother (ten years my junior) and I the only urban-raised members
of the family. I got a fine public school education with very
few exceptional highlights save my performance on the high school
debate team where obstinance, loquaciousness, and the ability to
talk really fast payed off with a few national trophies (the
largest of which is now sits on my mantle as a container for
excess pennies).
I went to Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA, to major in Computer
Science but bailed out of the major after one year because I
couldn't pass the required calculus classes. The focus floated
around for a year before settling into a major in English with a
minor in Art. So much for Dad's "My son's going to get a useful
degree" idea. During college I was a DJ at WUVT and editorial
page editor of the Tech newspaper. Perhaps writing a couple
columns/editorials a week helped make me so opinonated. ;) I've
done some freelance journalism since then.
Next came the Graduate Program in Creative Writing at the
University of Iowa, known better as the Iowa Writer's Workshop:
first, oldest, biggest, and most competitive of MFA writing
programs. I taught my first college courses (literature &
creative writing classes) as a graduate teaching assistant there.
A lot of wonderful experiences came out of those two years and no
place else would have given me the chance to meet and work with
as many excellent writers and poets as Iowa did. However, the
competitive pressure of that program drained out of me all the
passion for fiction writing I'd possessed when I entered it.
Sadly, after I left Iowa I didn't write for two years.
During those "lost years" I bounced about aimlessly. Lived with
my parents in Richmond, lived with friends in Manhattan briefly,
lived with roommates in the Fan (my beloved Victorian rowhouse
neighborhood in the center of Richmond), lived alone. Worked as a
waiter, worked as a substitute teacher, started two magazines in
Richmond, one which bombed in four months, one, called
_Caffeine_, which continued successful publication for about a
year and a half until too many of the staff left town or moved on
to other projects. Some of those people are dribbling back into
Richmond now [no one ever truly escapes this city] and there's
talk of starting _Caffeine_ up again.
My "other project" was (and still is) teaching composition as
adjunct faculty at Virgina Commonwealth University, a huge,
urban, state school. God, I love it. Really, I'm serious. Who
knew I would love teaching Freshman Comp so much? The best part
of being at VCU, though, was becoming friends with some grad
students in VCU's MFA writing program and through them becoming
encouraged and inspired to write again. I'm not as prolific as I
once was, nor as I hope to become, but the stories, plays, and
essays I've written in the last two years are some of my best
work. I had my first play produced in Richmond in May and recent
fiction of mine is forthcoming in an anthology of Virginia
writers.
While teaching at VCU I decided to go ahead and get a MA in
Literature (VCU doesn't have a Ph.D. program). Whenever I finish
my thesis, I'll get that slip of paper. The thesis? An
examination of the narratological function of global conspiracies
in postmodern fiction (specifically DeLillo, Pynchon, and Eco).
Frankly, I've lost interest in it and now feel like it's more of
a formality that a project of passion.
This summer I've been working as an independently contracted
technical editor for the Federal Reserve Automation Services,
editing really boring technical documents and a bi-weekly
newsletter. I finished that assignment last week (thank God),
but the Fed has asked me to conduct writing seminars for them
later this year, so I'm putting together a proposal for that.
The semester starts in two weeks, and in addition to teaching at
VCU, I'll also be teaching at the University of Richmond, a
small, expensive private school in the suburbs. Quite a contrast
from the diversity and urban setting of VCU.
What else should you know? In my teen years I was a gung-ho
Christian (even going so far as to investigate attending
seminary), but I got over it. I'm areligious now, but not
atheistic. In recent months I've been trying to explore a
personal spirituality, one that doesn't arise out of organized
scriptural interpretations and dogma.
I'm clean and sober for the first time in a long time. I haven't
had a drop of alcohol in over four months (and only one drink in
the last six months), have been nicotine-free for one year as of
today, and haven't touched any drug (except Tylenol, Benadryl,
and caffeine) in almost sixteen months. Quite a contrast from
some past behaviors. My body is thanking me for the change.
(This decision to clean up my act, by the way, is physical not
spiritual.)
The personal life has been a roller-coaster for the past year.
Two failed relationships and a two-month old relationship that up
until a week or so ago I would have said looked really promising.
Thursday last week she got a last-minute scholarship offer to a
school nine hours away. The semester begins tomorrow, and she's
leaving in five hours. I don't know how good I will be at
long-distance relationships; I've successfully avoided them to
this point in my life because "out of sight, out of mind" has
always had a stronger hold on me than "absence makes the heart
grow fonder." I'm finding I trust her unendingly; it's my own
self I don't trust. I can already see my nasty self-destructive
streak rearing its ugly head in an attempt to protect me from the
uncertainty of a long-distance relationship.
And I'll offer that as an excuse for how bland this bio seems. I
think I'm only writing it now to keep my mind off things I don't
want to be thinking about, to kill time while she packs, to keep
my mind off saying goodbye. It doesn't seem to be working does
it? For all the enjoyment and mental exercise I get out of the
Internet, I'm discovering more and more that as I've exorcised my
other addictions, I use FC and the net as I once used drugs and
alcohol: to divert my time and thoughts from the unpleasant
things that demand my attention. That's part of the reason I
took three months off from the list. I shouldn't complain
though. Ten months ago I'd be dealing with this via bloody marys
instead of writing a bio.
One last note to an already too long post. Sometime soon (as
soon as the sysadmin decides to mucky-muck about with my piddly
account problems) my e-mail address is changing. No longer will
I be eng3ghr@hibbs.vcu.edu. From that as yet unknown day in the
near future on I will be either gritter@hibbs.vcu.edu or
ritter@urvax.urich.edu.
Update your kill files, everybody. ;)
-- Greg Ritter gritter@hibbs.vcu.edu ritter@urvax.urich.edu