Blake Sanz
MFA in Fiction

Where did you get your undergraduate degree? What was your major? Where did you get your MFA? Why did you choose DU?
I went to Loyola New Orleans for undergrad, mainly because it was the only school that offered me both academic and basketball scholarships. The academic part, at least, worked out; we were miserable on the court. I majored in math and history for two years before dropping those to minors and settling on the big E.

Out of Loyola, I applied to Notre Dame’s MFA program because my girlfriend at the time was from northern Indiana and was soon to move back there. What made the decision easy: it was the only MFA program I got into, and they offered me a lot of money.

After teaching at LSU for a while, they were set to lay me off in the spring of 2006, so I went on the market. By the time I started applying, Katrina had just hit and the idea of living far from hurricanes seemed like a good one. When the DU position came up on the job lists, it read like a dream job for someone with my qualifications. So, I was excited to get it. The idea of starting anew was important to me then, and so I liked that this Writing Program was new and that I could be a part of its beginnings.

Describe your writing process.
I just do it. I don’t really reflect much on my process, or if I do, it’s only to have an intelligent-sounding answer to the question. When I was taking basketball seriously, I never used to ask myself, What is the process of playing basketball like? I just practiced a whole lot and played a whole lot, and the more I did, the more attuned I became to the subtleties of the game. The same is true with my writing. The more I write, the more likely I am to notice what works and what doesn’t, what matters and what doesn’t, what small things I can do to make a story better.

What do you enjoy most about writing?
I like to write late at night, and I enjoy the false sense it gives me that I’m the only one working. I also like putting myself in the mood of my stories. For example, I can remember one night when I was writing a character’s arrival to the Virgin Islands. I cooked myself jerk chicken, lit an “Ocean Breeze” candle, surrounded myself with books by Naipaul and Walcott and Shacochis that I’d read, put on CDs by Toots and the Maytals, and bobbed my head while I had my character settle into a random, abandoned trailer by the sea. Which my rundown apartment kind of looked and felt like. It takes a pretty self-centered, vain, audacious person to write fiction, I think, and I’m most comfortable letting out that side of me when I feel like no one would be looking. For someone not used to admitting to those qualities, it’s liberating.

Briefly, how would you describe your teaching philosophy?
I like students to learn from each other, but it’s not always easy to foster discussions that make that possible. So, the most important thing for me is to create assignments that ask questions that students will (1) care about and want to discuss, (2) have varying answers to, and (3) learn relevant stuff from. Having them write regularly is important, too. As I mentioned earlier about my own process, I feel that the more you write, the more you begin to understand what matters to good writing. So, in coupling that kind of practice with pointed discussions of what matters in writing, I hope that students can begin to understand what it means and what it feels like to have written something they’re proud of.

What drew you to become a writing teacher?
I was only drawn to it after I’d started doing it. Being a quiet person, I was terrified at first by the notion that I’d have to be in front of people for a long time. Once I started, though, I realized that the most important part of teaching is listening, and I’m pretty good at that, so I figured I’d found something I could manage.

What do you enjoy most about teaching writing?
I love having conferences with students who care. I learn a lot from them, and those sessions give you such a good sense of what matters to your students and why, what you ought to try to teach them and why. I always feel like I’ve made the biggest difference in those moments.

What are your hobbies and outside interests, or guilty pleasures?
I play classical guitar, write poetry, play basketball, watch YouTube videos and sports on TV. I have a couple of friends who know everything about music ever, and I enjoy mooching off their tastes. I take ridiculously long road trips by myself. But really, there’s nothing better than a summer afternoon at a café with a patio and a happy hour and a small, intimate group of really good, funny, fun people.

Name an unusual or little-known fact about yourself.
If you’ve gotten an email from me, then you know that my first name is Manuel, but my middle name isn’t really Blake. It’s Bleakley. I’m named after some random, weird-named great aunt. Since my dad got to pick the first name (his own), my mom got to pick the middle, and why she went with the name of some relative she never knew, I’ll never get.

So, when people ask me to initial something, I always put all three letters, because MS makes me think of the disease, and who wants to be known as BS?

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