by Anthony Trevino
Professor Wallace has a deep love for the craft of writing and what it can do, and he hopes to
instill the same passion in his students.
Creative writing professor, Mark Wallace, is one among many CSUSM faculty members who
has published several books. As a versatile writer, Wallace doesn’t stick to only one form of
writing. Over the years, he has written on an assortment of topics from experimental poetry to
straight forward prose.
“I don’t do the same stuff with genre every single time,” Professor Wallace said. “Each one of
these books is very different.”
Over the years, Professor Wallace has published 10 books, and he is currently working on
another novel, more specifically, a Science Fiction piece called Crab set to be released sometime
next year.
Professor Wallace advises young, aspiring writers that seek to see their work published to get to
know their surrounding writing community.
“What people need to be doing if they’re interested in a field is they need to be readers and they
need to get involved in the communities of activity that surround literature whether that be a
community of poets or an online community of writers and readers,” Professor Wallace said.
His love for writing lead him to attain a BA in English with a minor in Statistics from the George
Washington University, an MA in Creative Writing from SUNY-Binghamton and finally a
second MA and Ph.D. in English at SUNY-Buffalo.
“I’ve been interested in being a writer almost my whole life,” Professor Wallace said. “My
parents read to me and I read books early and I started writing my own poems and stories when I
was in third grade.”
After college and before teaching writing at CSUSM, Professor Wallace had several jobs, most
distinctly as a freelance journalist and professional editor for a number of years.
Despite holding down full time gigs that demanded his attention, Wallace snagged moments for
his personal writing projects whenever possible—notably, one of his collections of poetry was
completely written during bus rides to and from work.
Some of his published novels include Complications from Standing in a Circle, Dead Carnival,
Felonies of Illusion, Haze: Essays, Poems, Prose, Nothing Happened and Besides I Wasn’t
There, Sonnets of a Penny-A-Liner, Temporary Worker Rides a Subway, The Big Lie, The
Quarry and the Lot and Walking Dreams.
“You’ve got to get involved, and in fact that makes it no different than anything else,” Professor
Wallace said. “If you want to succeed in something you’ve got to figure out what’s going on in
that area of life and be a part of it.”