A career in fiction

By Cara Miller

Many people dream of becoming writers, claiming to have a best-selling novel in them somewhere. But the industry is incredibly competitive, and most people don’t have the time that a well-written story requires, nor do they have the diligence to get their work published.

Kyle Minor BA ’98 is one of a select few who has been able to make a successful career out of fiction writing. In fact, his first book, In the Devil’s Territory, was published in November 2008. Most of the short stories in this collection were previously published in literary magazines, and one of the novellas was selected for Best American Mystery Stories 2008. Additionally, Minor has received many prestigious awards, including being named one of the Best New Voices of 2006 by Random House and being a three-time honoree in The Atlantic Monthly’s annual writing awards contest.

Of course, it’s taken hard work and patience to get where he is now. Following graduation from AU, Minor had several different jobs, including associate pastor, freelance writer, college admissions officer, and editorial director of a startup publishing company. Finally, he went back to school and earned an MA from Antioch University, where he studied screenwriting under Mike Rich, author of Finding Forrester and The Rookie. He also received an MFA from Ohio State University, where he studied with well-known fiction writers such as Lee Martin, Lee K. Abbott, and Erin McGraw.

Minor explained, “Two big breaks came while I was at Ohio State. The first was The Atlantic Monthly’s writing contest for university students, in which my work was honored two years in a row in three genres — fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. The second was a nationwide essay contest sponsored by Random House, the winners of which were published in an anthology titled Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers.”

This exposure led to Minor’s being invited to a reading as part of the famous KGB Literary Series in New York. It also caught the attention of an agent at The Gersh Agency in New York and Los Angeles.

“For the first time, I had the thing a writer most wants: readers,” Minor said.

Although his writing career took off several years after he graduated, Minor credits AU for helping to lay a strong foundation. “I majored in mass communication,” he explained, “but I also spent a lot of time studying religion and philosophy with teachers like Spencer Spaulding and Willard Reed. It wasn’t until several years after graduation that I realized the value of what I had been taught and how to put it to good use.”

Minor also mentioned the opportunities he had at AU to explore his interests and “dabble freely.” While a student, he was also a rugby player, a resident assistant, an editor of the Andersonian, a student manager at WQME, a writer for Cheap Thrills skits, and a guitar player in the Encore house band. He also visited nursing homes on Sundays as part of a ministry led by math Professor Paul Saltzmann.

“Those four years were formative in helping me to find a broader understanding of the world we live in,” Minor said. “It was at AU that I first visited an AIDS clinic, first attended an African-American church, first attempted to have a conversation in a language other than English. I was forced to confront and reexamine the smallness of my own attitudes and choices, a process that continues even now, almost ten years later.”

It’s also a process that is reflected in his writing, which deals with issues of class and racial prejudices, illness and aging, and even murder. “As Philip Roth has reminded us, history is everything that happens everywhere,” Minor said.

Along with his writing career, Minor also teaches fiction, poetry writing, and literature at the University of Toledo, where he is a visiting assistant professor of creative writing. He lives in Toledo with his wife, Debbie, and their two sons, Ian, 5, and Dylan, 1.

As for the future, Minor said he plans to continue developing his writing career. “Certainly I’m hoping to get more deeply into television and film,” he said, “and in that regard, the recent success of fellow AU graduates like Todd and Cory Edwards has been an inspiration.”