Faculty on Oprah’s Book List

ENMU Professor’s Book featured on Oprah Magazine’s Top Ten List

By Shantiana White and Staff

Assistant Professor of English Stefan Kiesbye came to ENMU via Long Beach, California. His new novel Your House is on Fire, Your Children All Gone, published by Penguin in September 2012, tells the story of four adolescents who come of age in a small village on the Devil’s Moor – in an atmosphere thick with fear and suspicion. Their innocent games soon bring them face--to-face with the village’s darkest secrets. The book was one of Oprah Magazine’s Top Ten picks in October 2012 and made the Entertainment Weekly Must-List in November 2012.

Professor Kiesbye first came to the United States on a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Program. He intended to stay one year at the State University of New York in Buffalo, but decided to get his master’s in American Studies. Poet Irving Feldman influenced him by sparking his curiosity about creative writing, and starting in 1999, Professor Kiesbye attended the University of Michigan where he received his Master’s of Fine Arts in Creative Writing.

Stefan Kiesbye

Photograph by Sanaz Kiesbye

His first novel was Next Door Lived a Girl, which is about five adolescent boys in northern Germany who find a mentally

challenged young girl and try to take care of her but end up putting their own lives in danger. “A lot of people are interested in reading dark things, maybe because of the mundane world of our everyday life. The sense of danger gives us a peculiar feeling of freedom, at least on the page,” says Professor Kiesbye. The book has been translated into numerous languages and won the Low Fidelity Novella Award.

He and his wife Sanaz, who is an events coordinator for a California company, moved to Portales with their two Chinook dogs, Dunkin and Nozomi. They have since taken in Kurt, a Shepherd mix stray.

“I love the town; I’ve been able to meet a lot of fun people,” he says. “What makes life great here are my colleagues and new friends. Plus, Portales is a very relaxed place where no cars try to run over pedestrians who are walking their dogs. A welcome change from Southern California.”

He enjoys teaching in ENMU’s department of Languages and Literature. “Teaching is what we are trained to do, outside of writing, because writing doesn’t always pay the bills,” said the author with a laugh.

He hopes to expand the curriculum with a minor in Creative Writing and graduate classes that will allow students to earn a master’s in creative writing. “It’s exciting to find new students who get into writing and later turn into serious writers,” says Professor Kiesbye. His advice to would-be writers, “Find out what you’re interested in by writing a lot and learning through trial and error. You have to put in the time. A lot of time.”