TELLING THEIR STORIES HOFFMAN GIVES A VOICE TO THE WORKING CLASS


Empty houses haunt Dustin M. Hoffman’s mind.


While pursuing his degrees, Hoffman, an assistant professor of English at Winthrop since 2013, worked in construction, primarily painting houses, during the building boom. Then, the recession hit. He watched friends in the trades struggle.


“The subdivisions we built in Michigan — we couldn’t build them fast enough,” he said. “I heard after the crash, there were foreclosure signs everywhere. I write about it a lot. It’s a haunting idea that somehow I contributed to this irresponsible recession, or I profited from it.”


Chock full of stories about blue-collar workers, “One-Hundred-Knuckled Fist,” Hoffman’s new collection that takes inspiration from those days, built a solid reputation in the literary world. The collection won the 2015 Prairie Schooner Book Prize from University of Nebraska Press, which published “One-Hundred- Knuckled Fist.” It also received a positive review from Publishers Weekly and earned the Library of Michigan’s Notable Book distinction.


Bowling Green State Creative Writing Professor Wendell Mayo was Hoffman’s adviser for his thesis. Reflecting on “One-Hundred-Knuckled Fist,” Mayo said, “No one does it better than Hoffman.”


“His teaching, which I’ve observed first hand, is infectious,” Mayo said. “You see it in his students’ eyes and inspired writing. That’s how I’ve always seen Hoffman, a man — a writer and teacher — who gets the job done, brilliantly.”


Growing up in Alma, Michigan, Hoffman frequently read and fondly remembers his mother reading to him. As a child he worked on his first story, “Ninja Foxy,” about a wire hair terrier, his sidekick, Hammy the Hamster, and their ninja adventures. (Sadly, Hoffman noted, “Ninja Foxy” remains unfinished).


He started as an audio production major before transferring and switching to English at Western Michigan University.


“That [English] was probably the thing I was always meant to do,” he said. “I read every Hemingway novel while working at a movie theatre. In between ripping people’s movie tickets, I was reading ‘A Farewell to Arms.’


“I really tried not to meet my fate,” he joked. He earned a Ph.D. from Western Michigan and a master’s degree from Bowling Green State, where he published his first poem, “Unwrapping the Cul-de-Sac,” and his first short story, “Pushing the Knives.”


Hoffman somehow balances promoting his book, teaching, spending time with his family — wife Carrie, a full-time mom, and daughters Evelyn, 3, and Alison, 1 — and working on new material.


“As an artist, writing, your art, will always be the thing you can sacrifice,” he said. “You have to do your job, of course you need to be there for your family.…So what comes last, what’s the thing I can always say no to? My writing.”


This means he must carve out time to work in between semesters in his home office — which is the master bedroom closet, where he’s sometimes accompanied by Evelyn. Carrie is the first reader of his work.


“[While I was in school, Carrie] worked as a waitress, restaurant manager, gas station manager,” Hoffman said. “She worked so hard, which is why ‘One-Hundred-Knuckled Fist’ got dedicated to the hardest worker I know.”


Hoffman often tells students it’s fine not to rush as they, too, “meet their fates.”


“It’s OK to take your time and figure out what you want to do and to work,” he explained. “All of this, especially for writers, it helps having lived a life so you have something to write about.”


He brings his rejections to class for added inspiration: he averages 20 before a story is accepted.


So what’s his advice to others who want to publish their writing? “It sounds cliché, but it takes hard work and perseverance,” Hoffman said.


Photo credit: Carrie Hoffman 10 11


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