What is the story that you have to tell?

Amber Dermont introduces Rice students to rigors of creative writing

A new force for creative writing has joined Rice.

Amber Dermont, who grew up in a Victorian coastal village on Cape Cod, said she is particularly fond of the Rice campus' live oak trees. Photo by Jeff Fitlow

Amber Dermont, whose 2012 debut novel, “The Starboard Sea,” was hailed by the New York Times as “engrossing,” “captivating” and “inspired,” began teaching at the university in fall 2013 as an associate professor of English.

Dermont, who also is the author of the short story collection “Damage Control,” has used her first year at the university to share her passion for the written word with undergraduates, including teaching the first seminars in screenwriting at Rice. She said she is excited to grow Rice’s creative writing curriculum with the English Department’s poetry faculty, Joseph Campana and Paul Otremba.

“Teaching creative writing is a very tricky thing,” Dermont said of a form of literature that is different from run-of-the-mill academic or technical writing. “People often mistake any kind of arts program for being dangerous; it seems like this mysterious, mystical thing that you’re doing, when it’s actually very academic and very rigorous. To teach someone how to write, I really need to teach them how to read closely, slowly, thoughtfully and reflectively.”

A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Dermont received her doctorate in literature and creative writing from the University of Houston in 2006. She went on to teach at Rice for a year as a writer-in-residence fellow. Having arrived back at Rice in 2013 from Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Ga., Dermont draws inspiration from the English Department’s storied creative writing faculty emeriti — Justin Cronin, Marsha Recknagel ’85, Susan Wood, Max Apple and Larry McMurtry ’60.

“When you write a short story, novel or a poem, it has to be the most urgent thing in your life,” Dermont said. “If I’m working on a novel manuscript, in order for me to really give myself over to it, I have to live in that world; I have to be present for my characters. Maybe I’m being hard on myself, but that’s sort of what I have to do. I teach my students that urgency: What is the story that you have to tell? What is the story that is so compelling to you it’ll stop your heart?”

In teaching screenwriting, Dermont can draw on valuable experience gained as an invited participant in the Independent Filmmaker Project’s Emerging Storytellers forum in New York City in mid-September. Described as the “premier talent pool for new voices on the independent scene,” she was selected for a screenplay, “Likeable Characters,” which she co-wrote with fellow novelist Teddy Wayne. “Likeable Characters” is the coming-of-age story of a successful young male novelist who, struggling to write his next book, spends the summer at an artists’ colony and falls under the spell of a slightly older and wiser female writer.

Dermont, who requires her students to write their own treatments (the step between scene cards and the first draft of a screenplay), outlines and full-length screenplays, is aware of the challenge she poses students. “It’s asking a lot. It’s a very rigorous thing to take a creative writing or screenwriting class,” she said. “It can take you your whole life to write one short story or a screenplay, and to write a few short stories or screenplays in a semester, it’s a tall order.”

But the fruits of students’ labor are powerful. “What I really believe to be true about creative writing is that, one, it will save the humanities, and, two, it will also be the thing you can bring into every other aspect of your life,” Dermont said. “If you’re studying psychology, what better way to understand the human condition? If you’re in a science, technology, engineering or math field, you’re going to have to tell the story of your research. You’re going to have to be able to communicate with people and have a dynamic and passionate understanding of the work you do. If you know how to tell the story of your work, people will listen to you.”