Jess Walter Poster courtesy of The Center for American Literary Studies at Penn State

Jess Walter, bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins and the recent We Live in Water, was this year’s Steven Fisher Writer-in-Residence, visiting our (slightly warmer, finally!) campus from March 16-20, and his visit brought more than just better weather. Jess spoke with our 512 fiction writing class about his personal writing process (“It usually begins with coffee and a big cookie.”), what it means to live as a writer (“Writing is my religion. I go to the church of writing.”), and how it feels to write from the perspective of a character who is completely different from yourself (“I’d have to remind myself, the kids are coming home now, I can’t be saying the ‘F’ word.”).

A handful of us were lucky enough to get the opportunity to have one-on-one workshop sessions with Jess, and we unanimously report that these sessions were wholly awesome. Jess was helpful in the best way; he’s a great reader, and seemed to understand exactly what we were hoping to achieve with our stories. All of his advice was administered to help push us further in the direction that we were already hoping to go. He called our writing ambitious but successful, vague at times but, in a few moments, beautiful. And that’s among the coolest things any of us could have asked for from someone with Jess Walter’s talent.

As an added bonus to one of the most exciting academic weeks ever, Jess ate Indian food and talked Robert Durst, charming criminals, and really awesome dogs with us. He gave a reading that was equal parts hilarious and sad to cap off his visit, and signed our books as we said our goodbyes. The BA/MAs are still raving about his visit and reading, and have the Instagrammed posts of our signed books to prove it.