Vivid Voices

Leni Zumas was in her 20s, working as a barista and playing drums in a punk band, when she realized what she really wanted to do with her life: write.

Now she’s a bestselling author and director of PSU’s creative writing program. Her most recent novel, “Red Clocks,” won national acclaim and the Oregon Book Award for fiction.

But as she tells her students, her success wasn’t overnight.

“It was a long haul,” she said. “It’s not like you get the huge book deal and then you’re set. It’s asking, ‘What’s your voice? What do you have to bring into the world that isn’t already there?’”

The first step for Zumas was letting go of her perfectionism and learning to take risks — a lesson she passes on to her students.

Zumas had been a writer for many years, but kept her work to herself. She was afraid to share it with anyone until it was “brilliant and polished." After college, she decided it was time to make a change. She wanted to find a way to put writing at the center of her life.

The answer was getting an MFA at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. There, she found a writing community that pushed her to make messes and embrace uncertainty.

Once she wrote a story based on her experience touring with an all-girl band. She brought it to a workshop expecting praise. Her professor said it was too safe; she was using a formula that was already very familiar.

“She was refusing to reward me for writing in a way that had already been done,” Zumas said. “It was a challenge to me. And I offer up that same challenge to my students today."

"PSU students have so much talent and braininess. It's great to see the range of life experiences that gather in any classroom."

Zumas feels lucky to teach creative writing at PSU and live in Portland, which she calls “the ideal place to be a writer.”

“The students are my absolute favorite thing about working here,” she said. “They have so much talent and braininess. It’s great to see the range of life experiences that gather in any PSU classroom.”

More and more students from the program are finding success in literary fields. Sophia Shalmiyev recently published her memoir, Mother Winter, with Simon & Schuster. Alum Genevieve Hudson's latest novel Boys of Alabama was named one of the "Top 30 LGBTQ books that will change the literary landscape in 2020" according to O, The Oprah Magazine.

Zumas wants to cultivate more voices like theirs by offering scholarships and teaching assistantships. One of the markers of an established MFA program is an ability to help students financially. PSU can only afford to fund about one-third of its graduate students.

But the program is still young: PSU’s MFA is celebrating its tenth year in 2019-20, and the BFA is only in its fourth year. It doesn’t have decades of alumni to support the program – yet.

“Our students are the best ambassadors,” she said. “Ten years down the road, they’ll be there to cheer on the students coming up.”