Malena Watrous

Department

English

Malena Watrous (BC '97) is a novelist, essayist, short story writer, book critic and instructor of creative writing. She attended Barnard College, where “Fiction and Personal Narrative” was the first creative writing class that she took, and a class that she loved so much hat it strongly influenced her decision to stick with this career for life. She attended the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, then was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, where she went on to serve as a Jones Lecturer, teaching fiction writing to undergraduates there. She still works for Stanford, both as an instructor and as a curriculum coordinator for the Online Writer’s Studio, training other writing instructors in how to convert their classes to a format that will work online. She and her colleague, Scott Hutchins, co-started the two year novel certificate program there, developing a six course series at the end of which enrolled students receive a certificate for completing the novels that they write while in the program. Malena teaches the first course in this series, focusing on developing a propulsive beginning to the novel. 

 

Malena’s novel, If You Follow Me, was inspired by her experiences teaching English after leaving Barnard in a rural nuclear power plant town in Japan, was widely reviewed and nominated for a Lambda award. She has also published numerous short stories and essays, as well as a young-adult novel, and is a frequent book critic for The San Francisco Chronicle and The New York Times, among other publications. Her interests have always been divided between narrative and food—as a Barnard student, she interned with Melissa Clark, a prominent New York Times food writer—and last year she had the opportunity to write a cookbook for a Mexican Chef (Gabriela Camara) currently serving as adviser to the Mexican president. (That book was published by Ten Speed Press in April). She enjoys stretching herself creatively, staying flexible and continuing to have fun both in her writing and teaching, and is excited to be returning to teach an undergraduate workshop.