on Feroz Rather

This is a journalistic profile of the best Professor I had at Florida State. It serves as a writing sample.

Feroz Rather is an outspoken, humble man. He is a doctoral candidate in Florida State University’s Creative Writing program, and Rather’s work has appeared in The Millions, The Rumpus, and The Southeast Review, to name a few. His debut novel, The Night of Broken Glass, was released earlier this year. Rather fell in love with storytelling because of his father, who used to tell him bedtime stories. The way his father told stories inspired him to see the world around him in a more descriptive, deeper light. The whole idea of creative writing—in Rather’s terms—is to buy time. “Everyone is trying and longing to write the thought of utopia, the Ph.D. program gives the thought of utopia distance from the outside world,” says Rather. Rather is from Kashmir, India, but he has been living in the United States for the past seven years. He has a bachelor’s degree from Aligha Muslim University, a master’s degree in English literature from Jamiamiliaislamia, and an MFA in creative writing from California State University-Fresno. The majority of his creative works are focused around Kashmir, New Delhi, or his time spent in California. “My experience in Tallahassee and time spent at FSU have been the most productive years of my life,” Rather raved, “and the past three years have brought diffusion to what I have been working towards for a long, long time.” Rather says that his new book is commonly confused with the Jewish night of broken glass but has nothing to do with it. There’s a scene in a story called “Rosie,’ where a car in front of A military base is shot at and the shattered glass flies through the night. In fact, broken glass is a reoccurring theme throughout the novel. In the last chapter, aptly named “Night of Broken Glass,” assailants enter a mosque and shoot, breaking all the glass windows, the rose water bowls, and the chandeliers. “Joseph Conradt is very close to my heart,” Rather says, “tradition of exile and dislocation along with the question of power are important, and I would like to explore that question in my next book set in the United States.” Rather has already started thinking about a second novel, and he has started making notes for a story set in Kashmir and California. Fashion, revenge, and love will be the main focal points of his next story, whose protagonist is a Kashmirian who appeared in The Night of Broken Glass. His style has been grounded traditionally. The traditions of exile and dislocation discussed by Joseph Conradt are important themes for him. Over the years he has realized that his approach to writing has changed. Due to his grappling with Kashmir having intensified, his content has also intensified. Rather thinks he may want to stay in Tallahassee for a while, this is his fourth year here and he will likely stay for at least one year after its completion. “The English department is an excellent mix of teachers and students; everyone understands that we are a very competitive place and it translates, everyone does their best as well as they can,” he says. Although he had admission to other universities, Rather chose FSU because he thinks the department here is great. Skip Horack was also here, among many other people whom he wanted to work with. Horack delivered a talk at Fresno when he was attending. He really enjoys working with Horack, who has directly contributed to the book and has helped push him to finish it. Rather also took an independent study with him wherein he wrote chapters of his book. When he came into FSU’s program, Rather already had a fair amount of drafts for his novel. He had written initial stories and characters, and as he went along, he explored the minor characters and wrote stories from their point of view. Rather’s students love the way he teaches. “I really appreciated how Feroz structured the class, he weaned us onto canonical essays and the reasons for their success before having us craft our own works,” says Joseph Bayliss, who took Rather’s class in the spring of 2018. “That made me for more confident diving into the personal essay, as did the workshop format that the class took on. Everything felt very constructive, designed to further our craft in a comfortable social setting,” Bayliss says. Bayliss found Feroz to be very personable, a real chill guy to talk to. After reading his essay [The Throwaways], he said that he came to understand that the man has quite a story to tell, but realized
that he never made this a focal point of the class, focusing instead on his students. Rather, in Bayliss’ words, is an incredibly interesting, yet humble person. Bayliss went on to rave about how Rather encouraged his students to elevate their writing above the liminal. Unlike many other teachers, he was not overly concerned with form, rather he emphasized that his students should really dig deeper into the content of their stories, encouraging his students to think critically
about what exactly they are trying to express, and how those ideas may be applied to greater
philosophical questions. He was more concerned with molding his students into interesting writers, as well as writers who were technically proficient than concentrating on the academic form or rules of writing, Bayliss says. “The most important thing is working with students, you don’t feel like you’re a writer as much as you feel as you are a student among students.” Rather says. Another one of Rather’s past students, Seth Russel, says “He treats his students as intellectual peers rather than people who are beneath him,” he goes on, “He’s very kind and genuinely wants us to succeed, even going so far as to recommend us places to submit essays for publication, some of which are places he is published and could help us get our foot in the door.” It is apparent that Rather is a very talented man with a wealth of information and experiences begging to be written about who is respected by his students and his colleagues. The world is a better place with his presence and his stories.