Phillip Arrington describes himself as a working writer and independent author. A 30-year veteran of Eastern Michigan University, in the teaching of composition, rhetoric and literature, he has been writing for much longer.
As a child, in his sick bed, he wrote to stave off boredom. He was asthmatic and lived under his mother’s iron rule of keeping calm and avoiding activities that would hinder his breathing.
“That’s where it really started, I guess,” he said. “A lot of writers end up writing for reasons that provide them with distractions from other things that they can’t do, or aren’t allowed to do.”
He said that his history probably doesn’t say who he is, but it certainly says where he’s been.
In 2013, Arrington self-published his first novel, the Serpent’s Sage, which was derived from a true story he has told for most of his life – an image that stuck with him from a trip to the Lee County Fair in Sanford, North Carolina.
“We were strolling on the Midway and I broke away from my parents and entered this show,” he said. “And in the tent there was a relatively large black woman sitting in a wooden box. There were snakes and turtles in the box and she had a Thermos of black coffee sitting beside her.”
Arrington said the woman picked up the snakes and bit the heads off then stripped the skin from the spine, ate it and chased it with black coffee.
“I had never seen anything like this in my life,” he said.
While his preferred genre for the moment is fiction, he also writes poetry. And although he doesn’t wish to claim the title of “poet,” he has published poems in various literary magazines.
“I can’t not write,” he said. “Many people can very easily. It’s a compulsion with me.”
Arrington’s colleagues say his candor and passion reflect in his teaching.
He is meticulous and caring, said Bernard Miller, EMU English department professor.
“Phil himself is driven in all areas, scholarship and administration. But it has become most apparent to me in his teaching,” Miller said in an email. “In fact, he's one of the most intense people I know.”
Arrington takes pride in his craft and appreciates the spark that sometimes ignites fire into a students work.
“It’s not writer’s block that concerns me,” he said. “It’s writer’s blindness. Writers can’t see their writing like the reader can see it.”
He said it takes a tremendous amount of time and distance away from a piece, or somebody’s response to something you have written to see it through different eyes. Sometimes, you see on the page what’s in your mind, though it may not be on the page.
“That’s writer’s blindness,” he said.
Arrington is also known for various contributions to Eastern’s community such as serving as Communications Director for the EMU-American Association of University Professors, serving as the Media Spokesperson for EMU’s AAUP Chapter.
According to his EMU biography page, other accolades include being an alternate member for the Bargaining Council and Director of Teaching Assistants/Freshman Composition. He has also been a member of the Curriculum Committee and Chair of the Freshman Writing Committee.
“I have always considered him a supportive, respected colleague,” Derek Mueller, associate professor of written communication, said. “I appreciate that he is candid about departmental matters. And I admire that he has made his career at EMU since 1984, which I consider to be an example for others of us who are newer to Ypsilanti.”
Though his first book is still relatively new, Arrington has an idea for another that he said might be a summer project. He plans to set the stage in the same small, coastal town as the first, but he isn’t giving away any secrets.
“I think we all write out of what we know and we may write toward what we don’t know,” he said. “Sometimes what we don’t know will emerge in the writing anyway. No matter what we do and that’s where the surprises come in.”
The Serpent’s Sage is available as a hard copy edition, or electronically through smashwords.com and amazon.com.
