#i actually think a lot of current literary books coming from mfa programs are like this

[sofipitch]

I saw a performance of the Crucible where the actor playing the main guy would yell his lines for dramatic emphasis, but he did it so much that once we got to the climax it kind of had no emotional resonance at all, because it was the same tone as the entire play had been conducted, this scene wasn't more emotional/powerful/impactful than the others. The whole play felt very blah and I got tired of that guy's yelling. Anyways that's how I feel about the lyrics in tortured poets department. It needs to be massively scaled back, don't use 5 metaphors, it dulls the impact of what one good one could do and makes everything sound the same.

[wellesleyunderground]

Wellesley Writes It: Interview with Patrice Caldwell ’15, Founder of People of Color in Publishing

Patrice Caldwell ’15 is the founder & fundraising chair of People of Color in Publishing – a grassroots organization dedicated to supporting, empowering, and uplifting racially and ethnically marginalized members of the book publishing industry. Born and raised in Texas, Patrice was a children’s book editor before shifting to be a literary agent at Howard Morhaim Literary Agency.

In 2018, she was named a Publishers Weekly Star Watch honoree and featured on The Writer’s Digest podcast and Bustle’s inaugural “Lit List” as one of ten women changing the book world.

Her anthology, A Phoenix First Must Burn – 16 stories of Black girl magic, resistance, and hope – is out March 10, 2020 from Viking Books for Young Readers/Penguin Teen in the US/Canada and Hot Key Books in the UK! Visit Patrice online at patricecaldwell.com, Twitter @whimsicallyours, and Instagram @whimsicalaquarian.

Wellesley Underground’s Wellesley Writes it Series Editor, E.B. Bartels ’10, had the chance to converse with Patrice via email about publishing, reading, and writing. E.B. is grateful to Patrice for willing to be part of the Wellesley Writes It series, even with everything else she has going on!

EB: When did you first become interested in going into writing and publishing? Did something at Wellesley spark that interest?

PC: For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved writing. It’s how I best express myself. That love pretty naturally grew into creating stories. I’ve always had a very vivid imagination. I’ve also always been pretty aware that publishers exist. I remember at a young age noticing the logos on the spines of books (notating the imprint/publisher), so by the time I was a teen I could recall which publishers published my favorite books (served me very well in interviews, haha) and was curious about that process. But I was a theater kid, intensely, that’s what I thought I would do, but then I decided to go to Wellesley and majored in political science (especially theory—I took ever class Professor Grattan, she’s brilliant) but then dabbled in a bunch of other subjects, including English. I think English courses definitely strengthened my critical thinking, but I absolutely do not think you have to be an English or creative writing major in order to work in publishing or be a writer. My theater background is just as helpful as is my political theory one. (I have friends who are best-selling authors who did MFA programs and others who never went to college.)

Wellesley was my safe space. I came back to myself while at Wellesley. I wrote three (unpublished) manuscripts during my time there, starting the summer after my first year, and I held publishing and writing related internships. I also took a fantastic children’s literature course taught by Susan Meyer (who’s a children’s author herself!) that changed my world. I highly recommend it. We studied children’s literature, got to talk to an author and a literary agent, and we wrote our own stories. I later did a creative writing independent study with her, and I truly thank Professor Meyer for expanding my interest in writing and publishing.

EB: How did People in Color Publishing come about? What goals do you have for the organization? What would you like people to know about it?

PC: I founded People of Color in Publishing in August 2016 to allow people of color clearer access into the book publishing industry, better support networks, and professional development opportunities. It really is about sending the elevator back down for others after climbing (& maybe even assembling) the stairs.

We’re currently working towards nonprofit status. You can learn more about us and our initiatives at https://www.pocinpublishing.com/ and sign up for our newsletter, which is incredibly well done. As you’ll see when you visit the site, the organization really is a team effort. I don’t and couldn’t do this alone; I’ve had an amazing team with me from day one. We each play to our strengths and work really well together. (The org is very active on Instagram and Twitter, too!)

EB: I am really excited about your collection A Phoenix First Must Burn, coming out from Penguin Random House on March 10, 2020. What inspired you to put together that anthology? What was challenging about the process of compiling the anthology, and what was rewarding about it?

PC: Thank you; I’m so excited for it as well. I talk about this more in the book’s introduction, but I was inspired by my eternal love for Octavia Butler—the title even comes from a passage in Parable of the Talents—as well as similar adult market anthologies like Sheree R. Thomas’s Dark Matter, and wondering what one for teens would look like. The answer is power and imagination like I’ve never before seen, in the form of a kick-ass, #BlackGirlMagic anthology that’s hella queer—I love it and wouldn’t have it any other way.

Before I became a literary agent, I was a children’s book editor. The editing of these stories was the easy part. It was super fun. The hard part was wrangling of everyone, haha. Thankfully they were amazing to work with and I wasn’t doing it alone—my then editor Kendra Levin also has a fantastic editorial eye.

As for what was rewarding, my younger self needed this. Like I said, it’s Black and queer. Since Toni Morrison passed, a day hasn’t gone by in which I’ve thought, about how she wrote for Black people, especially Black women, unapologetically. I feel that deeply. I got to work with some of my favorite writers writing today. How often does someone get to say that, you know. And, I grew a lot as a writer. I never thought I could write a short story, but I did. We’ve been getting some really great early reviews (like this beautifully-written starred review from Kirkus, OMG!) But going back to how my younger self needed this, the most rewarding thing has been the people who’ve reached out how excited they are to read it and how much they’ve been craving a book like this. It’s a dream come true. A dream I strategized to reach, worked my butt off on, and so yeah, I’m over the moon.

EB: You're also the author of a YA fantasy book (publication date TBD) in addition to the anthology. How is the experience of writing a fantasy novel different and/or similar to compiling an anthology? What advice would you give to someone writing their own book (of any genre)?

PC: It’s such a different experience in that writing this novel is all me, especially because it hasn’t sold yet (I’m finishing revising it now). My agents are amazing, with an excellent editorial skills, and so they’re certainly there to help and advise me should I need them—and then I have author friends I can ask for advice too—but ultimately if I don’t write this book, it doesn’t get written. There’s no one else to nudge.

The similarities, however, between novels and short stories are that ultimately, I’m the same writer, I’m the same person. For instance, I love experimenting with structure. My story for A Phoenix First Must Burnbegins in the present, goes back in time, and ends again at the present. The story I just wrote, for Dahlia Adler’s Shakespeare-inspired anthology, is epistolary—told partially in journal entries, and my third short story (for an unannounced thing) takes place partially on the set of a scripted reality TV show, so there’s definitely going to be script excerpts throughout. My novel is similar in that it’s told through three women, but two of them are narrated in first present tense (like, I am) whereas one is in third past (she was). And then every few chapters I have an excerpt of something from this fantasy world’s archives—oral myths passed down about various gods, peace treaties made over the years, accounts from the war that just ended, etc. It’s been a huge challenge and lot of fun.

I didn’t have the skills to pull this book off when I started writing it, which is something I think a lot of writers deal with at some point. Therefore, I had two options: put the book down and write something more manageable or take the time it took to write this. Neither option is better than the other—the best option is what’s right for you, and I didn’t have anything more manageable that I was as passionate about, so I had to write through it. When you’ve tried everything you can possibly try (including breaks, they’re important!) to unstick your story, you have to write through it. You have to deal with the voices (including sometimes your own) saying you can’t, and the only way to truly deal with those voices is to show up to the paper, the screen, whatever it is, and write. In writing and believing in my own work before anyone else has, I’ve found my confidence. Confidence in your own writing is key because only you can write the book you want to write <3.

EB: What are you currently reading?

PC: Realm of Ash by Tasha Suri. I just loved herdebut novel, Empire of Sand, and I’m so pumped to be diving into this one. Badass women, incredibly rich worldbuilding, and very cool magic as well as a lot about access to forgotten history and assimilation into other cultures.

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell. It is getting fantastic early reviews and was pitched as a 21stcentury Lolita (by one of my agents who sold it actually) and given all the #MeToo conversations, it has ended up being super timely. I hated Lolita (could not finish), and I love this book. Oh, and Stephen King loved it, which for me is an auto-buy. It’s out March 10, 2020.

The Midnight Lie by Marie Rutkoski. You definitely don’t have to love someone’s books to be friends with them, but in this case, Marie is a friend whose work I’m obsessed with. It’s set in the same world as another one of her series—one of my favorite series that’s like game theory in a fantasy world and begins with The Winner’s Curse. Marie is brilliant, this book is brilliant, and it’s also very queer. It’s out March 3, 2020.

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik. This book has been getting the best of reviews and praise, so it’s been at the top of my to-reads list for a while, but I started reading it because a friend mentioned that it has multiple POVs all in first person (which is very unusual), and like I said, I love playing around with stuff like that. This is book is a masterpiece.

As you can tell, I love reading books. I also love book hopping, so I’m always reading a bunch at once. I’m on a bit of a fantasy streak right now. But from October to December 2019 I read like a romance novel a week (sometimes three a week, haha) and revisited my favorite urban fantasy series, so if you’re into those check out Chloe Neill’s Chicagoland Vampires + Heirs of Chicagoland series, Tessa Dare’s Girl Meets Duke series and of course our very own Jasmine Guillory, my favorite of hers thus far is The Wedding Party). After I’m done with my revisions, I wanna take a writing break and sink into Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey and Dan Jones’s The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors.

EB: What future projects/goals do you have for yourself and your career?

PC: I spent most of Wellesley working towards two goals: being published and working in publishing. In doing so, I accomplished a lot in a very short time, and I totally wrecked my mental health—it took most of 2019 to rebuild that. I’m trying to live more in the present and enjoy that. Career wise, I’m just gonna trust that I’m already doing the work I need to do and that I have the support systems I need to help me keep doing that. And for a personal goal, I have been wanting to spend more time in Paris—I went back for the first time in ten years for all of February 2019, and just loved it. My whole soul felt at home, so I’d like to take some French lessons to fill in the gaps (I took French from middle school through sophomore year at Wellesley and achieved proficiency, but I want to become fluent). And then I want to visit more for longer and see where that takes me.

EB: I so admire your freelance hustle, and as someone attempting it myself, too, I know that sometimes it feels like you have to work 24/7 to make it possible. How do you set boundaries for yourself and your work? How do you take care of yourself?

PC: So, I’m a literary agent and a writer, which means my entire income comes from commission I make from the writer client projects I work on and sell as an agent and advance payments (and hopefully royalties down the line) as a writer. That said, I didn’t become a literary agent until June 2019, and didn’t get the first payment from a client book I sold until November, so most my income is still coming from writing (for reference, I received my first advance check in fall of 2018).

As of now, balancing the two isn’t that hard for me. But you have to understand that I was first an editor and a writer, so I had to do most of the deadlines for A Phoenix First Must Burn while also going into an office 5 days a week, from 10-7/8pm. Now, I manage my own schedule.

My main “freelance life” struggle was that I was diagnosed with ADHD this year. When I left my full-time, salaried job, at the end of 2018, I didn’t realize just how helpful that structure had been. To me, that structure was only ever a limitation. I felt like it was ridiculous with all of this technology that we all had to be in NYC, I felt like editors needed to be more proactive, I preferred to travel to book festivals and teach at workshops and meet writers where they are, etc. etc. But then, without that structure, everything fell apart. Suddenly, tasks that used to take me five minutes could actually take me five hours because I only had myself to answer to. I would hyper-focus on everything but what I needed to be doing. It was a really hard time for me because I had all of these things I wanted to do now that I finally had more time to do them, but ADHD had other plans—I constantly felt like I wasn’t achieving what I knew I could because I had done it before.

I had to learn to forgive myself. This is how my brain works, and there are a lot of strengths to it (like if I remove distractions like the internet, I can hyper-focus for hours, I’m a fantastic problem solver, and I thrive in chaos—all things that help me excel at my work). Learning to forgive yourself for not accomplishing all the things, whether you have a mental illness or not, is really important.

You also have to be hyper-aware of your strengths and weaknesses. What are things you know you’re just not good at? Can you pay someone else to do it? Is there an app you can download that can make that task easier? I delegate and outsource every detail-level thing that I can because I’m horrible at details and I’ve finally accepted that that’s okay. One person cannot do everything forever; it’s not sustainable.

And then you also have to say no. If you can afford to say no to something that doesn’t really interest you / have a high payoff, do so. That is how you set boundaries. My health has become so much better ever since I started saying no to more things. Why? It gives me time to do other things, those things I’ve been saying forever I’m going to make more time for (like French lessons and reading books for fun). Now, my evenings and weekends are for non-work things. I love my jobs they’re still jobs.

Trust that you’re on the right path. Trust that you have the support systems you need and if you aren’t or don’t, dream and strategize towards those.

Ultimately, I am the happiest I’ve ever been and that’s because I finally stopped focusing my whole life around my jobs, stopped caring what people who aren’t paying my bills think, and started living my actual life.

EB: What else would you like our readers to know about you and/or your work?

PC: I have a website, Twitter, Instagram, and a newsletter. If you enjoyed this interview, definitely sign up for my newsletter (& check out past issues) as I always give creative life pep talks, share recipes and what books and tv shows I’m loving. I think of my newsletter as a longer form version of my Twitter. My website is a pretty standard website—you can find out more about my own books, my clients, events I’m attending, etc. there. And my Instagram is slightly more personal, with pretty pictures of my face and my book haha, and I share daily/weekly updates about my writing there via IG stories.

And, of course, buy my book: https://patricecaldwell.com/a-phoenix-first-must-burn

Thank you so much for having me and for reading. Happy New Year!

[wellesleyunderground]

Wellesley Writes It: Jane Ridgeway ‘09 (@janeridgeway), Fiction Writer and Teacher

Photo by Jane Ridgeway.

Jane Ridgeway is a fiction writer born and raised in Seattle, now living in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the current Writer in Residence at the Kerouac Project of Orlando, Florida, living and writing in the house in which Jack Kerouac wrote The Dharma Bums. Her work appears in the Cover Stories anthology from Volt Books. She has an MFA in fiction from the University of Oregon, and has taught creative writing and literature at the U of O, as well as at prep schools in California and Hawai’i. Interview by Camille Bond ‘17, Wellesley Writes It series editor.

WU: Welcome, Jane, and thanks so much for chatting with the Wellesley Underground! One of your short stories was recently published in an anthology, Cover Stories. What is the story about?

So, as the title suggests, Cover Stories’ mission was to anthologize “cover” versions of other short stories—so you take a canonical (or not-so-canonical) story that you passionately love or hate, and you riff off of it, explore some particular facet of it, or write very literary fan fiction of it, essentially. It’s an exploration of that weird and glorious phenomenon in which, over the decades, a song can be transformed through the different covers of it that are performed by artists with radically different sensibilities.

My story, “Peredelkino,” is a take on Isaac Babel’s “My First Goose,” a personal favorite and a story that definitely haunts me. Babel’s narrator, Liutov, is this gentle, nervous Jewish intellectual who finds himself embedded with the incredibly violent Cossacks and has to find a way to integrate himself to survive—and because he finds himself both drawn to the sort of sexy, robust glamour of the soldiers and terrified of their brutality. My piece updates some of the same conflicts that Liutov experienced to the era of the Soviet purges of intellectuals carried out by the KGB (which took the lives of many artists, including Babel himself).

WU: As a fiction writer, are there specific themes or issues that you feel drawn to? How do you discuss these themes/issues in your writing?

Grief, loss, sex, queerness, mortality, the sturm und drang of being a teenage girl, the way the past keeps popping its head back up throughout a life/a century/a place’s history. People who try really hard to be good but aren’t very successful at it. For some reason, religion, which is certainly not because I want to espouse any particular set of beliefs through my writing, or even something I focus on deliberately—I just can’t seem to get away from it, even if I try to. I’m really interested in the stories we tell ourselves about the afterlife, and how that shapes the way we live.

WU: As an emerging fiction writer, you’ve been accepted as one of four annual residents at the Kerouac Project in Florida. Congratulations! Kerouac residents spend a season living in Kerouac Project housing and working on creative projects. What are you working on during your residency?

I’m now one month into the Kerouac and have been using my time to generate new short story material! When I accepted the Kerouac I self-imposed some pressure to come here and bang out an entire novel draft, which isn’t what’s happened so far. The Kerouac is gloriously unconstrained: I’ve been given time to work on any project I choose, so I’m taking advantage of that freedom to play a little, write outside of my usual range, and create things that aren’t geared toward any particular publication, workshop, etc.

WU: How do you hope to develop as a writer during your time at the Kerouac Project?

I’ve been greatly enjoying finding my rhythm and discovering a creative schedule that works for me outside the constraints of my usual day job and responsibilities. It’s also been an exercise in overcoming self-doubt, because when I first arrived I was walloped by a wave of uncertainty and impostor syndrome. Through some combination of “faking it till I make it” and adopting some of the swaggering ego of the Beat generation that permeates the Kerouac House, I’ve found a way through it. (Kerouac himself said, “You’re a genius all the time!” which feels awfully audacious, but I think we could all stand to borrow a little of the audacity of a man who wrote his unedited first drafts on a single continuous scroll of paper.)

WU: You previously worked as a staff writer at the Los Altos Town Crier newspaper. How, if at all, has your journalism career informed your creative writing?

Working at the paper was one of the happiest phases of my working life! I loved having an immediate and local audience of subscribers with a clear stake in the stories I was covering, rather than a hazy sense that someone might read my fiction years in the future after I’d painstakingly revised for months, spent a year or so waiting to hear back from lit mags, then many more months before publication. I also love the precise, straight-to-the-point journalistic style. (Readers of this interview may notice that my natural tendency leans to the verbose!) Having experienced journalists and a brilliant copy editor to learn from helped me write crisper prose. Coming out of an MFA writing literary fiction, I think I also took the (unproductive) attitude that all of my stories were delicate, precious creations that I couldn’t possibly let out of my hands until they were perfect. Working at a publication that publishes weekly taught me to work with a much tighter turnaround time, much more efficiently, with less unnecessary psychodrama. There’s a deadline—just get it done!

WU: You’re currently teaching in a prep school environment, and have also taught Creative Writing at the University of Oregon, where you studied for your MFA. How, if at all, has teaching the subject changed your perspective on the act of creative writing? How has it informed your development as a writer?

I wholeheartedly love teaching, even though I can’t exactly recommend it to aspiring writers on the grounds of short hours or great work-life balance! Teaching literature means I get to spend my days hanging out with some of my favorite stories, novels, and poems, and really thinking about how to break them down for a young audience. It’s great to admire literature, but it’s even more useful to know how it ticks! On a more woo-woo level, teaching has helped me as a writer because it’s balanced out some of my edges and helped me grow into a softer, more vulnerable, caring, and patient human. Which is hard as hell, and not something I’m sure I would ever have gotten good at otherwise, because that’s not my natural inclination! I’ve always tended to be a seething ball of snark and sarcasm, and, untempered, that’s no way to go through life! The writers I admire most are all able to observe how much humankind can suck without losing their love and compassion for what a desperate, scrappy lot we all are. Teaching gives you great respect for people (young or otherwise) who are trying their hardest. Being a person is hard! We shouldn’t dismiss how hard it is, even when people disappoint us.

WU: Can you tell us a bit about your background in theater, and how this background has informed your literary career?

Some useful lessons of a theater-kid background for writers:

Better to commit to a choice than to be boring

Say “yes, and”

Don’t write any dialogue so stilted your actors would be embarrassed to say it

Read everything out loud after you’ve written it

I actually first started writing seriously after a playwriting class in my senior year of high school resulted in a festival production of my short play. Watching the actors and director in rehearsal, hearing my words, realizing how I could make the work better, was one of the most electrifying experiences I’d ever had as a young person.

WU: Are there any teachers and/or students who have been particularly influential to you?

A long and glorious lineage, starting from my absolute miracle of a second-grade teacher who made me fall in love with Greek myths, to my brilliant high school English teachers who were tremendously overqualified to be teaching me grammar and who told me I could be a writer, to Prof. Erian at Wellesley who actually taught me how to edit, to the teachers who caught me as a proper adult and really kicked my butt into writing things that an audience other than myself might care about. Also, Ehud Havazelet, the stern fiction father figure who permanently broke me of the ability to use the word “impactful” or read it without a tinge of disgust.

Hillger → Culhane → Doelger → Aegerter → Erian → Kiesbye → Brown, Bradley, Havazelet

WU: You have described your thankfulness to belong to a network of writers and thinkers. How can Wellesley students and alumnx build similar networks around themselves?

I love knowing writers and artists and readers all over the country. A lot of my writer acquaintances come not from my grad program but from an eclectic network of youngsters who were all applying to grad school at the same time as me, and joined forces to share information behind the scenes on how well-funded programs were (among other things.) I’ve always found networking in the traditional sense grotesque and repellent, but I think there’s a lot to be said for finding other people who care about the things you care about, befriending them with no regard for whether they’re currently (or ever likely to be) in a position to help you, and generously sharing information that might be helpful. Do your best to root for other people’s success even though sometimes you’re going to feel bitter and jealous because you’re a human and, like all of us, you kind of suck sometimes. Also, don’t be a dickbag. We all know who the dickbags in a given community are.

WU: What is your approach to self-care?

I take a very pragmatic approach to self-care that wouldn’t play well in a glossy magazine! To me, self-care is about doing the things that will make my life better, like doing the dishes I don’t want to do, taking out the trash, and clearing my inbox, more so than ‘treating myself’, you know? This summer, this has included writing lots of snail mail, going running even when I don’t want to, and long, slow, inefficient cooking projects.

[wellesleyunderground]

Wellesley Writes It: Alison Lanier ’15 (@LanierAlison), Writer & Editor

Photo credit: Molly O’Brien

ALISON LANIER is an MFA candidate at University of Massachusetts Boston and a member of the Writers' Room of Boston. She also serves as an Editor at Mortar Magazine and Critical Flame, as an Editorial Assistant at AGNI, and as Film and Media Editor at Atticus Review. Her fiction, poetry, reviews, and essays have appeared in The Establishment, Ms., Bust, Burningword, Origins, and elsewhere. Interview by Camille Bond ‘17, Wellesley Writes It series editor.

WU: You have had fiction and nonfiction pieces featured in an impressive array of publications. Would you say that your writing career has a thematic focus? In other words: whether you are writing nonfiction for The Female Gaze or poetry for Burningword, is there a specific theme or set of issues that inspires you?

Generally it’s whatever on my mind - and what’s been on my mind recently is gender issues, healthcare, and media oversaturation, so that’s generally what gets onto the page. I’m always, always writing some kind of long form fiction, but nonfiction and poetry usually have some kind of occasion. Like rewatching Daisies for the first time since Wellesley and feeling the need to articulate why it’s quite so infuriating to watch during the age of Trump. My poetry always ends up being a bit more personal.

WU: You have also founded a publication of your own: Mortar Magazine. What is Mortar’s mission statement, and what led you to create it?

Mortar was actually something my fiance came up with at the writers’ conference where we first met. We were lucky enough to be surrounded by some truly exceptional writers and instructors at the time, and one of them, the poet Molly Gaudry, swooped in as our guardian angel and helped us assemble an advisory board. The next two years were website-building, branding, and planning. Mortar’s initial aim was to showcase experimental writing. The idea is like the visual of brick and mortar: mortar is the less flashy, solid, gritty stuff around the edges holding it all together. Eventually “experimental” (Cait had come up with the idea in an experimental fiction class, not coincidentally) transformed into “of the moment” writing from underrepresented voices. We try to feature as many LGBTIA+ writers as possible, as well as writers of color and narratives from neuro-atypical people.

WU: How would you like to see Mortar develop over the next five years? How do you plan to achieve this growth?

I’d love for the magazine to gain readers and presence, to forge relationships with more writers and fellow publications. That means constant work and, of course, a financial commitment. My hope is to keep the magazine free to read and to be able to pay our writers, which would really only be achievable with a large-ish readership and a platform like Patreon. That’s the direction I hope we’re going in, and I think it’s realistic, but that will take time: maybe five years, maybe more. We have had about five thousand unique visitors to the site since our first issue launched, and I’d like to see that readership grow.   

WU: You’re currently pursuing a Masters of Fine Arts degree at the University of Massachusetts. Can you tell us a bit about the concentration of your degree?

Essentially the MFA is a terminal degree in creative writing and literature. Personally I’m angling toward speculative fiction and memoir studies, as well as digital writing. I’ve gotten really lucky with the instructors I’ve worked with--my last two workshops were with ZZ Packer and Joan Wickersham, and in the last year I’ve gotten to take two incredible SF courses as well. But a lot of what the degree gives you - at least at UMass - is pedagogy training, which isn’t always a guarantee in a grad program, even when you’re expected to pitch in teaching undergrads simultaneously.

WU: Can you describe the transition from undergraduate studies at Wellesley to graduate studies at the University of Massachusetts? How do academics and social dynamics compare?

It’s the transition from going to a small, wealthy private college to a working class commuter school. The creative writing program itself is wonderfully tight-knit and made up of only about two dozen people, but as a whole the campus makes Wellesley feel luxurious. Where Wellesley functioned around campus community, UMass has a more amorphous, practical sense of belonging. Within the niche of the writing and literature grad programs though, it’s a very different feel. The academics are as rigorous at the research level, but the professional, industry focus in the creative writing side definitely gives a new dimension to the fiction program that was absent at Wellesley.

WU: You’re also working a handful of editorial jobs in addition to pursuing your degree. How much attention does each of your editorial positions require? How do you balance your different pursuits?

None of these jobs are full-time, which is what makes it all manageable. For AGNI, I’m in the office once a week and in touch via email 24/7. For Mortar, I’m the whole of the web production and social media team, which means a lot of spreadsheets and scheduling social media blasts. Critical Flame is more of a helping-hand situation, where I helped to run the Conversation series for about two years and then retreated back to a general editing role. Atticus is just fun, not least of which because if my friend is waxing poetic about a movie over drinks, I can just ask them to write down their thoughts and help them shape it into a review. Also, I get to watch a whole lot of movies and describe what a dumpster fire the DC cinematic universe is. “Balancing pursuits” could be a euphemism for first come, first serve. What needs doing first is what gets done. Each semester comes with a new routine, new classes to TA, new tutoring schedules. Some of my work has a schedule, and some just doesn’t, and I have to keep myself accountable to knowing what’s happening and when it needs to be ready to run.

WU: What is your approach to self-care?

I’ll be the first to admit I’m not an expert. SSRIs are an important part of my daily routine. Basically I do as much as I can, even if it’s not much - which is part of the blessing of the industry, from the writing side at least. Rarely, except on freelancing gigs or the later stages of print production, do you have to have twenty-four hour turn-around times or down-to-the-wire deadlines. If you know yourself, your pace, and how you work, it’s a real treat to be able to work how you want. The publishing side is a different story. Social media campaigns, advertising, editing, communication with other staff...it’s not relaxing to say the least. But I always have a scented candle on my desk, video game breaks at the end of the day, and a community to celebrate or commiserate with.

WU: During your time at Wellesley, you worked on the editorial board of The Wellesley Review and Counterpoint Magazine. Can you tell us about your involvement with these college publications?

I was one of those bright-eyed and bushy-tailed first years who glued myself to every publication I could, which eventually ended with me becoming the Opinions Editor with Wenyen Deng on the News my sophomore year, prose editor on the Review my junior and senior year, and Editor in Chief of Counterpoint senior year. That was some of the best pre-professional training I ever got. Everything from working with first drafts to distribution to financial crises. That’s where I learned the scope of everything that has to happen even at a small campus publication and how to stretch its limits. My senior year I ended up missing my last Review launch in order to go to The New England Book Awards, where Counterpoint was being honored. I stood alone next to the little display case smiling very awkwardly at the cameraman and pretending that I believed that I belonged there.  A lot of the publishing world feels like that: putting yourself out somewhere you don’t think you’ve earned and then faking your way past the Impostor Syndrome until you do believe you belong there.

WU: Who were your favorite Wellesley professors? Were there any English or Media Studies classes that you found particularly formative?

Oooh yes. Marilyn Sides, Alison Hickey, Dan Chiasson, Wini Wood...Sitting down in Vernon Shetley’s film review workshop and actually being told this is how you write a review was one of the most beneficial things I did at Wellesley. Dan’s New York Review of Books course was great too: learning a publication and turning in work on a deadline with a huge amount of self-direction and a huge amount of potential criticism is as close to the real-world as you get.

WU: What advice would you give to a Wellesley student or alumnx who would like to pursue a career in writing and/or publishing?

I’ll harp on the cliche: it really has to be what you want to be doing. Shockingly enough, the money isn’t good, which means that about seventy-five percent of the time you’re running on a combination of enthusiasm, stubbornness, and pasta dinners. On the literary side, you often can’t do what your colleagues over in journalism are up to (getting paid for everything you publish). So often times, it’s the community that keeps you upright and afloat emotionally. It really is community, not networking. This is a space where everyone relies on one another. I’d say, go to every event, reading, talk, and book launch you can. Meet up for coffee with local authors you admire. Be proactive about emailing and pursuing positions, even if they are those dreaded unpaid internships. Freelancing jobs add up and fit in neatly around an internship schedule. Wellesley is close to the hub of so much educational publishing, the freelancing jobs abound.    

WU: What is a significant obstacle that you have run into on your career path? How did you deal with it, and what did you learn from the experience?

Working in isolation - especially right after graduation - definitely lead me to feel adrift. It’s tough to put in your all when you feel like you’re tossing your efforts into a vacuum. The funny thing was, I was getting my pieces published and working freelance gigs that kept me on my toes, but there were days at a time when I would have a dry spell. I’d go on day trips up to little North Shore towns or out to go swimming at Walden or to the MFA - inexpensive ways to pass the time - but my life felt pretty uprooted generally. All my commitments were remote: I spent close to two months on the road driving cross country and back again with my girlfriend without significant disruption to my work schedule, as long as I got wifi a few times a day. I started calling it funemployment, and although it was the schedule and the lifestyle I was aiming for out of school, it did feel defeating to be at loose ends from day to day. What got me out of that was going to school and realizing how much I missed academia and a schedule. The other thing was joining a co-op, Writers’ Room of Boston, which gave me a secure office space downtown to get out of my apartment and have a workplace for my various projects.  

WU: How do you expect the publishing industry to change in the next ten years? What are your hopes for the future of the industry?

I think the industry is very self-aware right now: it has to be, with the political and economic climate around the arts. The threats to the NEA especially are terrifying to small publications, and Net Neutrality is a big part of online creators’ security, including magazines like Mortar and Critical Flame. While I hope this doesn’t happen, I think the literary publishing community is tensed to do some radical problem-solving. I say radical, because I can’t quite conceive what the blow will be and what its solution will look like. My hope is obviously that this doesn’t have to happen and small publishers continue to grow and have access to the financial support they need. But apart from the functional aspects of the industry, I think publishing is being pushed to be more self-aware in a similar way to how Hollywood is: it’s becoming less male, less white, and more accountable. Any Jonathan Franzens are hopefully the product of the last ten years and not the next ten.  

WU: What would you like to be doing (professionally and/or otherwise) in ten years?

The ideal dream job is editorial work at a magazine or trade publishing. Otherwise, just to send, send, send work out to magazines and agents. I think it was Celeste Ng who said to aim for fifty rejections a year on a manuscript, just to motivate yourself get your work into the world and be sure you’re submitting as much as you can. Hopefully in ten years I’ll have achieved more than rejections on the manuscripts I send. But on the literary magazine front, I’d love to continue and expand the kind of work I’m doing now. It’s the kind of work and community I decided I wanted to be a part of and worked toward during Wellesley, and I honestly love it.

Check out Mortar Magazine here!