A Story of a Teaching Cross-Roads and AROHO Speaks: Writer to Writer Interview with Tracey Cravens Gras

I remember precisely where I was when I got the news that I’d been accepted to work with women writers at A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Summer 2011 Retreat: in my cubicle at the community college where I’d just returned to teaching after ten years at home raising my children. I thought I’d earned my black-belt in teaching due to the seven years of teaching I’d done in the Midwest BK (before kids), and the several years I did for the college in California where I now dolefully sat.

But it seemed during my ten year absence, the dynamics of classroom teaching had intensified in a way I was struggling to surmount: students texting beneath desk tops, clusters of talkers with little regard for my presence in front of them, students disappearing for days without notice only to surface and demand passing grades, other students signing in their missing desk mates on the roll sheet as casually as eating lemondrops.

I’d been called to my Dean’s office twice already, once for a complaint that my course was too easy and once for a complaint that my course was too hard, and on this particular day, I’d been challenged voraciously by a student who didn’t buy my definitions of similes and metaphors. Armed only with my MFA in poetry and my quiet disposition, I folded quietly and gratefully into my office to wait out my office hours (passing, as usual, without visitor) where…in my inbox…I found an email from A Room of Her Own awaited me…

…as merciful confirmation that maybe until I wised up to this next crop of students, maybe I belonged working with women writers. The confirmations kept rolling in, when, to my delight, I got the chance to engage immediately with the women running AROHO. It caught me off guard at first—these women got in there with a volley of emails and wrangled with me over the details of the work I wanted to bring to the table for my Mind Stretch…

Tracey Cravens Gras
Photo by Jamie Clifford, 2011 AROHO Retreat

Only, this time, I wasn’t in trouble….I was in love…with thinkers of like mind, ready to play. I realized later that the Mind Stretch presentation was a new format for them too, so in actuality, we were in effect collaborating on the enterprise.

One of those women, authoress of those rich emails, who immediately made me feel not only welcome, but inspired me to do my best as a writer, presenter, and a person, was Administrative Director of AROHO retreats, Tracey. All that warmth emanating from her emails fulfilled its promise when I finally stepped off the bus at Ghost Ranch, and there she was, smiling, handing out thumb drives (a godsend, as all my teaching materials had not made it to the ranch, but that’s a story I told on another day, here).

Without further ado, I’m honored to share this interview with Tracey here. She embodies the AROHO spirit, wether in person, or in virtual exchange.

AROHO Speaks: Writer to Writer, Interview with Tracey Cravens Gras

In your AROHO Summer 2011 Retreat Bio, you mention savoring “the boundless creative opportunities and inspiration that working for AROHO offers:  dabbling in graphic and web design, problem-solving, collaborating, and most recently, working to make the 2011 Retreat unparalleled and uniquely AROHO.” I know it is safe to say, Tracey, that all of us attending the retreat were in awe of your role as Administrative Director. Can you talk to us about what was unique to this retreat in comparison to others? What you enjoyed most bringing to the table (besides boundless energy and a smile regardless of the dilemma at hand)? Most challenging aspect and its reward, if there was one?

I answered this first question last, because I’m a procrastinator at heart, not to mention deficient in attentiveness and a smidge rebellious.  Since the 2011 Retreat was only the second one I’ve been personally involved with, I don’t feel qualified to distinguish it from all the others that came before.  I can say, however, that I feel strongly that AROHO is a living, breathing organization which thrives on the energy of the women it supports.  Making the Retreat more reflective of and shaped by the community felt like the right direction for such a collective of talented and creative women. 

The most challenging aspect of the 2011 Retreat was without a doubt its biggest reward—inviting participants to more fully invest their passions and expertise into the week’s program was at once terrifying and powerful.  The women—yourself included—who dove in head-first made it all worthwhile.  The creative projects and collaborations that have grown out of the week could never have been planned, only encouraged.  It is fascinating to watch and gives me a great deal of pride to know that I helped create favorable conditions for such transformations to take place. Read  more here.

AROHO Speaks, Writer to Writer: Interview with Maura MacNeil



Maura McNeil

 I'm proud to cross-post this interview with Summer 2011 AROHO Retreat writer Maura MacNeil (conducted by Barbara Ann Yoder). I decided to jump in and give you a quick glance mid-interview. I continue to be moved by the tremendous strength and resilience of the women gathered for the retreat; it seems many of us crossed intense barriers (emotional, spiritual, physical) in order to perservere and attend the conference.

Is there one specific moment or event at the retreat that sparked an insight or shift in how you perceive either your work or yourself as a writer?


During the retreat I recognized that the fear I carried with me as a woman writer in the context of tackling difficult subject matter, or fearing judgment from others—all that baggage that we tend to carry around as writers that keeps us from writing what we are meant to write—is part of what Marilynne Robinson spoke of as a categorical way we are taught to think. While I listened to her words I suddenly understood that I had the power to break that spell. The “deeper experience hidden from the categorical ways we are taught to think” that Marilynne spoke to was a space I suddenly felt the courage to enter because I was surrounded by women who understood those words just as I did.

I arrived at the retreat having just lost my husband who died quite suddenly in June, so I was raw with grief. But at the same time I was in an emotional space where I was completely open to the authentic creative energy of AROHO women and to the possibility that I might be able to frame a new perspective on my writing life in this foreign land of widowhood where all that was “familiar” was suddenly erased.

Over the past decade or so, even though I was writing and publishing and editing, I felt as though my life had become increasingly compartmentalized into my “life as writer” and my “other life” that was filled with obligations that constantly tugged me away from being present in my creative life. I was increasingly distracted. When Marilynne told us that we should make ourselves into someone we might enjoy being with, that we should give ourselves a creative life that as writers we want to live, her words were like an alarm going off, and I knew that something very important was happening to my sense of myself as a woman writer.
More here.

Autumnal Update and AROHO Speaks, Writer to Writer: An Interview with Marcia Meier

This hibernal season I feel a bit like a spider with multiple webs underway at once. I love my work as poetry editor at The Fertile Source, I love my work as part of AROHO's 2011 Summer Retreat Interview Team, I love cross-posting and chatting over at She Writes, and I also love blogging here as Feral Mom, Feral Writer. I have some new projects in the wings for the New Year, including preparing to provide content and moderate discussion at The Collaboration Hub as well as teaching a few on-line writing courses.


I'm busy at work on a Word Press website where I hope to centralize the various content from other sites where I spend a good deal of my writing life. And that will also allow me to slip Feral Mom back to its original seed intent: to bare the landscape of the beautiful challenge and gift of raising children while writing (in the company of other mother writers and artists). I'm also pleased to announce that a prose piece, "Reverie for the Girl at Gabe's, downtown Iowa City" was accepted for on-line publication by In Her place and should be posted before Christmas.

In the meantime, please enjoy this interview I conducted with Marcia Meier. I plan to write my next AROHO reading diary on Marcia's book, Navigating the Rough Waters of Today's Publishing World: Critical Advice for Writers from Industry Insiders (Quill Driver Books, 2010) and will post a link here for you shortly.

Marcia—you are in inspiration—visiting your home site, one sees that you are not only a Member of The Redroom , but you are also currently in a low-residency master of fine arts in creative writing program through Antioch University in Los Angeles. You also have time to give writing workshops while keeping a very active blog at your Willow Rock Writers website. How do you balance it all and what advice would you have for writers trying to build web presence?

Well, when everything is listed like that, I do wonder how I get it all done! I was a print journalist for 17 years before I turned to teaching and books, and I learned how to be very disciplined and organized during those years, so that helps a lot. I try to give myself time to write every day, and I also try to set aside certain days for specific tasks. I usually meet with clients on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. That leaves Mondays and Fridays (and Saturdays and Sundays) for writing, reading and master’s work. Read more....

"Poet Teacher Seeks World" Blog Launch and An Interview with Feral Mom, Feral Writer

While still celebrating last summer’s A Room of Her Own Foundations retreat, I realize I failed to provide a link here to the interview my poet friend Lisa Rizzo graciously conducted with me—I hope you’ll check out the interview as a way to support her brand new blog, Poet Teacher Seeks World. Not only did I enjoy seeking out her out at breakfast, and sharing a flashlight up the darkened trail back to our rooms on the mesa, but I also managed to solicit a poem of hers for The Fertile Source that we soon realized I'd first heard her read some years ago at a Women on Writing Conference (and promptly solicited from her back then). And Lisa, the offer stands....

We (the four of us on the interview team: yours truly, Lisa Rizzo, Marlene Samuels, and Barbara Yoder) have since also cross-posted our interviews on the AROHO Speaks, Writer to Writer website, where over the course of the next year we plan to present interviews with as many of this summer’s 2011 retreatants as possible (in the spirit of harvesting insights and passing on a little practical wisdom and inspiration).

And I've missed the practice of the regular flow of postings at Feral Mom--I've been shocked quiet for the moment, but more on that later...life continues to catapault me past the comfort of my furthest growth ring (ready or not). I'm sure I won't be able to resist writing about it for long. Under which circumstances have you been shocked quiet? I'd love to hear your thoughts.