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54 SHAKERONLINE.COM | SUMMER 2016 hristian Moody | Creative Writing When you think of a school of visual arts, you may not picture a whole lot of writing going on. To the contrary, says Christian Moody, a widely published short-story writer who joined the faculty of CIA in 2015. “That’s what is so interesting about working at CIA,” he explains. “If you design a video game, you have characters, you have a world, you have a story, so there is a lot of writing. Students doing film are working from scripts. Illustrators, whether it’s graphic narrative like a comic book or graphic novel, or editorial illustration, also work with text, so there is a lot of writing happening here.” Moody earned his M.F.A. from Syracuse University and Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati. His work has been published in Esquire, The Cincinnati Review, and Faultline, among other journals, as well as anthologized in the collections Best New American Voices and Best American Fantasy. And Moody plans for more writing to happen at CIA in the near future. Next year, the school will launch a national literary magazine, for example, and there’s now a writing club. Students can also do a concentration in creative writing at CIA (think of it like a minor). Like many writers, Moody has been working with words for much of his life. Growing up in Indiana, he was editor of the student newspaper at his high school, where he also founded a creative writing club. As an undergraduate at Indiana University, he intended to major in journalism, then fell in love with poetry. “I worked in poetry for a long time and even started my M.F.A. as a poet,” explains Moody. But early in his time at Syracuse, he heard the writer George Saunders, who is on the faculty at the school, speak. “He writes fiction in which he blends these other-worldly qualities,” says Moody. “And I thought, ‘Oh, you can do that?’” Moody began writing his own short stories, quickly finding success with his work, which he describes as melding themes like family, love, and community with “something quirky,” like a science fiction or magical element. As Moody was wrapping up his doctorate, the position at CIA caught his eye. “It really stood out because of the array of writing they were interested in. It was also a less traditional, more forward looking place,” he recalls. So he applied and, last July, was appointed assistant professor in the CIA’s Department of Liberal Arts. Moody, his partner – the illustrator Margaret Kimball – and their daughter moved into Shaker’s historic South Shaker Building on Van Aken Boulevard last summer. “It was so charming and Hogwarts like, so we decided to live there until we figured out where we wanted to buy a house,” Moody says. Kimball works as a professional illustrator and recently published the adult coloring book Birds & Botanicals. She is also among the artists selected by Cleveland’s LAND Studio to create a mural along the Red Line in advance of this summer’s Republican National Convention. “We’ve been taking a lot of walks,” says Moody. “We love the walkable streets. We walk to the farmer’s market at Shaker Square. The playground. The library. We really love the Shaker Library.” SL


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