Thesis Watch: An Interview with MFA Candidate Lia Ferguson

By Zeke Shomler

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Lia Ferguson is a third-year graduate student pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction at UAF. Her thesis, a work of prose entitled I’m Riding My Bike in the Dark, is set to be defended this semester.  I was lucky enough to talk to Lia recently about her work, writing, and journey to UAF.

Photo by Lia Ferguson

How would you describe your thesis?

My thesis is a collection of short stories plus a novella. The stories are all ones I've been working on throughout the last couple of years, and because I've been working on them concurrently, they deal with [many] of the same themes and struggles, which was a happy accident.

What themes and questions guide your writing?

I was listening to a podcast recently. It was an episode of Hidden Brain about Socrates and his philosophy on the Delphic Oracle's command to "know thyself." It was basically about a human's inability to understand every part of themselves. We often do things outside of our interests; we have urges and needs beyond our conscious understanding, and I was like, “Is that what I'm doing? Is that what I'm exploring?” My characters often don't know why they're doing the things they're doing, but I hope that the reader can see through to the part of the psyche that the character was blind to, and maybe in the process, the reader is forced to consider their own subconscious.

I [also] think that question about the self extends to people as a community, so each story also deals with larger societal questions: Why do we self-destruct? Why is there violence against women? Why do we suffer from addiction? Why are we burning down the planet? Why do we insist that everyone work terrible jobs? And what does our lack of insight into ourselves as individuals have to do with the larger society? That's what I'm striving for in my writing, anyway. And creating this thesis has been a process of learning what questions I'm drawn to. I'm sure it will continue to evolve.

Why did you choose this form of thesis (as opposed to, for example, a novel)?

I have felt pulled in [many] different directions throughout the program with teaching and working and classes and writing. Each of those things [has] taken up time, but they've also provided a lot of inspiration–so many ideas to explore! I don't think I would have had the focus to write and revise a full novel. Also, constructing a plot is challenging for me, so I wanted to work on crafting shorter pieces with cohesive beginnings, middles, and ends before diving into something bigger. I do want to write a novel, hopefully soon!

What is your favorite story (or part of a story) within your thesis?

It changes because I get sick of the stories as I'm working on them and have to take little breaks. But right now, I like my story "Orogenesis." It's about a high schooler on a wilderness adventure in the Cascade Mountains with a crush on her guide. The two get lost from the group and [wake] up a bug-like forest god with an agenda who promises to grant them three wishes. That one is more out there than the others, so it has been fun to write.

What kind of responses do you hope to get from / inspire in your readers? What would you say is your motivation for writing?

I want people to be entertained. I want them to become emotionally involved with the characters, and I want people to learn something about my characters that might surprise them. If that also causes them to connect with their inner selves or reconsider the world [somehow], even better! I am nosy by nature, and many of us are. We are interested in other people's lives, so I want to exploit that urge to understand [others] and use it to [increase] my understanding of the world. For that reason, it can be hard to gauge where I'm writing for myself and where I'm writing for others. I have an urge to create something. I have little sparks of ideas for stories, and I want to see them come to life.

With the way I write, I don't know where a story is going, so if I want to know the ending, I have to keep writing. So, not only do I want others to see the world like I do, [but] it's also a revelatory process wherein I begin to understand how I see the world. It's like I'm in the dark, in my own house, groping for the light switch, but it's not where it always is. Then, when I find it– and I'm quite pleased with myself for finding it–it turns out it's not my house at all– it's a new, unfamiliar room, and other people are milling about without giving any indication of whether or not they like the brightness.

What brought you to study for an MFA at UAF?

I was researching all the fully-funded MFA programs in the U.S. and learned about UAF. Living somewhere new and different intrigued me (answering this on a -37-degree day, I didn't really know what I was getting into). This was also a couple of years ago when everything was more heavily impacted and closed down due to Covid. I needed to choose between UAF and a school in L.A. I'd already lived in California, and Covid in a big city sounded hard. I had never lived somewhere with lots of snow; everything about the faculty and current students seemed great. Long winters would be conducive to writing and gratify my introverted tendencies. It all aligned, and I like it a lot!

What is your educational background?

I got my bachelor's in Earth Systems from Stanford University and minored in creative writing, focusing on creative nonfiction. In the two years between degrees, I took writing classes at Hugo House, a community writing center in Seattle, where I started getting into short stories and fiction. It's also what gave me the confidence to apply to grad school.

What's your writing process like?

I schedule an hour or two a day. I'm not very good with routines, so I stay flexible about when those hours will take place, but they usually end up somewhere in the middle of the day. I have to be fully free of distractions. I use ColdTurkey to block myself from going on the Internet on my computer, and I use the app Freedom to block everything on my phone. And then I put myself somewhere where no one will talk to me. Just getting to that part is the hardest step of the process. Once there, I give myself the goal of writing about 500 words an hour, giving me plenty of time to stare into space and sigh, which I've learned is an important part of the process.

Do you have any advice for other people interested in pursuing writing? What has been the most impactful part of your studies here at UAF?

Try to surround yourself with other writers. Writing is often seen as a solitary activity, but ultimately, you want your writing to be read by other people. A lot of writing advice says just to sit down and do it [daily], and you'll get good at it. You definitely need to read and write to improve, but that's easier said than done. I've been on a bender of professional runners' YouTube channels, and all they have to do is run to get faster, but they still have teams and coaches. It is more enjoyable and, therefore, more effective to improve at any skill if you can share that experience with others and get some guidance. There may be something mystical about the art of writing, but there are plenty of mundane aspects to it, and those can be taught. You don't need an MFA, but any writing group or class will open a whole world. At least it did for me.

What do you think is the role of stories in the world? Do you have any thoughts on the impact of writing in general? What makes this work important?

Language itself is already art. There are so many metaphors we use daily–pitch black, spending time, defensible claims– that become so common we forget they [started as] poetry (shout out to Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, and Dr. Sarah Stanley for introducing me to it). Metaphor shapes the way we see the world. We must continue to evolve this art lest we get stuck in a rut of unchanging language and, therefore, unchanging outlooks. 

What makes art important emotionally is that people can often feel alone in their thoughts and views of the world. And then they watch a movie or read an essay, or see a beautiful painting or performance or get sucked into a novel and think, “Yes! This person gets it. This artist sees things the way I see things.”

Or even better, they have shown me how I can see things. Other people like this art; therefore, we are the same in this [essential] way that seems [more natural] than a discursive consensus. And that means I'm not alone.

What do you plan to do with these stories after your studies? Are you submitting them to journals yet? Do you think you'll try to publish your thesis as a book, or do you have other plans for this collection?

I have not submitted my stories to journals yet, but that's my goal for this semester. I would really love to publish them as a book because they are thematically resonant, but that can be a more difficult sell for an emerging writer. People don't read short stories as much as they read novels, so the publishing industry isn't as interested in them. But it's still a possibility!