Meet Bradley Jay Owens (CCS Literature ‘78)

Editor’s note: We are featuring stories from members of the CCS community. Some stories will be personal and others will be written in the third person. Check them out here and make sure to submit your own story here.

What I learned about writing at CCS, and how it led to my first book

I started writing fiction while taking Marvin Mudrick's fiction class in the late 1970s. The class met once a week (Thursdays, I believe) for three hours. If you had a manuscript you wanted to share, you set a copy on his desk at the front of the room. Dr. Mudrick would read, out loud, as many of the manuscripts as possible, make comments, and direct class discussion.

I was in awe of Dr. Mudrick's knowledge of literature, his wit, his spirit of generosity, and his ability to quickly find a story's flaws and strengths. He talked about the stories in such a way that we could learn something from them – whether they were successful or not (and most were not).

In the late 1980s, I was accepted into Stanford University's Creative Writing Program, where I received my M.A. in English. I then taught undergraduate fiction classes from 1989 to 1992. I was no Dr. Mudrick, but I tried, at least, to find ways to talk about the students' stories in ways that might benefit, not only the writer, but the other students in the class.

My first collection of short fiction – "How I Met You" – has just come out from Brighthorse Books, a small independent press based in Omaha, Nebraska.

My time at CCS allowed me to explore many different interests and fields, to try things out, to test myself. I always knew I wanted to write, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know. CCS was the beginning of my finding out.