Ben Fama

2019 Creative Writing Faculty and Alumni Publications
By Ben Fama / in Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, TNS Lit Scene, Writing for Children and Young Adults / January 7, 2020

2019 book publications by MFA Creative Writing alumni.

The New School Creative Writing Program is proud to announce its list of 2019 alumni and faculty book publications. This year, 23 books have been published by alumni of the MFA in Creative Writing Program and 10 books have been published by faculty of the MFA in Creative Writing Program.

The list includes publications from the “Big Four” publishing houses, university presses, and independent publishers. All four genres of study offered by the MFA in Creative Writing Program are represented: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and writing for children and young adults.

Every year, the Creative Writing Program celebrates these authors with its annual book party. The 2019 authors will be celebrated on February 19, 2020, 6 PM, The New School, Theresa Lang Center

Congratulations to all! *If you published a book this year or know of a fellow MFA alumni who published a book, please let us know by emailing writingprogram@newschool.edu and we will add you to this list.

MFA Program Alumni

Kacen Callender ’14, Queen of the Conquered, Hachette

Sona Charaipotra ’12, Symptoms of a Heartbreak, Imprint

Charlotte Nicole Davis ’16, The Good Luck Girls, Tor Teen

Gabriel Don '13, Living Without Skin, Fly By Night Press

Ben Fama '15, Deathwish, Newest York

Kristina Forest ’16, I Wanna Be Where Your Are, Roaring Book Press

DuEwa Frazier, '11, Alice's Musical Debut, Lit Noire Publishing Children

Lee Matthew Goldberg ’06, The Desire Card, Fahrenheit Press

Gina Marie Guadagnino ’10, The Parting Glass, Atria Books

Ellen Hagan ’03 and Renee Watson (BA ’09), Watch Us Rise, Bloomsbury USA

Robert Haller ’15, Another Life, Blackstone Publishing

Corey Ann Haydu ’12, Eventown, Katherine Tegen Books

Scott Hess ’09, The River Runs Red, Lethe Press

Megin Jiménez ‘04, Mongrel Tongue, 1913 Press

Amanda Joy, A River of Royal Blood, G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers

Anna Meriano, Love Sugar Magic, Walden Pond Press

Allison Moorer ’17, Blood: A Memoir, Da Capo Press

Jessie Paddock ’17, The Crush Necklace, Scholastic

Laura Silverman ’15, You Asked For Perfect, Sourcebooks Fire, and It’s a Whole Spiel, Knopf Books for Young Readers

Aditi Sriram ’13, Beyond the Boulevards: A Short Biography of Pondicherry, Aleph Book Company

Marco Rafalá ’06, How Fires End, Little A

David Leo Rice ‘19, Angel House, Kerpunkt Press

Matthew Thorburn ’04, The Grace of Distance, Louisiana University Press

Masha Tupitsyn ’19, Picture Cycle, Semiotext(e)

Riggio Honors Program: Writing & Democracy Alumni

2019 book publications by Riggio: Writing & Democracy program alumni.

Christopher Shade ’09, The Good Mother of Marseilles, Paloma Press

Marisa Frasca ‘09, Wild Fennel: Poems and Other Stories, Bordighera Press

Ted Kerr, OnCurating Issue 42: What You Don’t Know About AIDS Could Fill A Museum, OnCurating

Creative Writing Faculty

2019 book publications by Creative Writing faculty.

Elaine Equi, The Intangibles, Coffee House Press

Mira Jacob, Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations, One World

James Lasdun, Afternoon of A Faun, W. W. Norton

Suzannah Lessard, The Absent Hand: Reimagining Our American Landscape,
Counterpoint Press

Caron Levis, Mama’s Work Shoes, Abrams Books for Young Readers

Robert Polito, Manny Farber: Paintings and Writings, H & B

John Reed, A Drama In Time: The New School Century, Profile Editions

Jill Santopolo, More Than Words, G.P. Putnam’s Sons

Susan Shapiro, Barbie, Assouline

Darcey Steinke, Flash Count Diary: Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life, Sarah Crichton Books

Brenda Wineapple, The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation, Random House
MFA students respond to New York Times “This is 18” Prompt
By Creative Writing at The New School / in TNS Lit Scene / January 2, 2020

What does it mean to be an 18-year-old girl around the world? The New York Times asked young women photographers this question. The result was “This Is 18 ,” a portrait of girlhood across six continents and twelve time zones.

The Times asked our program — in 150 words or less, tell us, what does (or did) it mean to you to be an 18-year-old girl? Here are the selections, which include current students from our Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Writing for Children and Young Adults genres.

Anna Antongiorgi

dear 18 year old me,

you are absolutely terrifying and
terrified. the world is swallowing you

into instagram images, silence, and
goodbyes. you are about to move across

the country to winters and boat shoes
and an utter lack of sea salt in the

atmosphere. i hope you’d be proud of the us
we have become. you’re favorite color

is still red. we still cry at mother-daughter
films. you still fight for your friends, but

we’ve come to learn fighting is more like
the california sun finding an uncountable

amount of openings in the pink withering
clouds. you’re about to love a bit too much,

and scrape up the skin covering your ribs
as the earth tries to make its way into your

heart. four years later, you’ll place your hands on
your torso, grateful for all that chest

has seen you through.

Cassidy Archdeacon

There you were, lying in the backyard alone in the summertime while Mom was at work, staring at the sun through the walnut tree. You were wearing a swimsuit, as you wanted to arrive at college with a tan. Your feet were sore, as you had spent one hour every day that summer walking around Mom’s dark curtained bedroom in heels, practicing for all the fancy parties you were certain you’d soon attend. Because you didn’t attend in high school, no; in high school you drove around at night with a boy you loved, who actually loved your best friend. Through the walnut tree you saw the people you had yet to know but one day would. You saw September. And then you saw the year after that, where the boy has all but disappeared from your life, as has your tan, your certainty, and your collection of heels.

Leslie Caldwell - Existence

I am here.

A chromosomal choice. X or Y. My XX existence says I’m different, not equal, not seen. Not the real me, but the me where people ignore my raised hands.

Or the me with sun burnt skin, genetically imprinted from the African sun, that makes strangers grab their bags, my smile feared and police shoot first, and maybe ask questions later.

Or the me whose full lips and swaying hips are a siren call, a wantonness stare magnet, drawing men's salacious looks, their brazenness confident, their gestures never opposed, always welcomed. And why? Because of the me they see.

And when I protest, demand respect as a Nubian Princess.

They laugh! Call me a bitch! Chant the generic phrase society believes define my femininity, my placement in American society − she’s just an angry black girl!

That’s the 18 year old me, the world sees.

Pune Dracker - “18 is Thriller”

18 is thriller thriller night and you can still wear white socks with black penny loafers and know inside a deep venous tremor that people look different act different and are beautiful and good and you can listen to thriller thriller night and it will not touch you somewhere you don’t want to be touched yet and it will not make you touch someone else where they don’t want. And 18 may become an ad in the local paper, an artist wanting to photograph a girl 18 nude ideally a fairy in the misty marshes by the bay, on a honey summer morning and people feel beautiful when they are 18 and have not been yet been touched by someone else somewhere they don’t want. But 18 is you are too scared to call the number fairy or not.

Siyun Fang - A Person is a Reed that Loves to Contemplate

In her parents’ mind
the family would benefit more by letting her clean the reed curtain
rather than spending money to allow her to go to school

Come summer, this eighteen-year old accepts her yellowish fate
handing her illegible silhouette over to the earth

The reeds become straight and soft in her hand
leaving the village in an orderly way, walking toward markets, cities and towns
The sky is blue, cloud is white, river is limpid;
her slender body keeps stooping down
until it turns into a huge question mark

Several years later
the villagers simply scratch the surface when they retell her story

Her funeral is in the dead of winter
unmarried all her life, she doesn’t leave kids behind
Music and drumbeats are not blasted out, nobody attends the funeral—
only reeds over the slope
are still waving in the wind

Lindiwe Priscilla Jenness - Mamlindiso!

By middle age you will be a woman alone.
Deal with it.
You are the Black Sheep of the family.

Men are going to hurt you.
They will beat you and treat you like a serf.
Pay them no mind and be careful how you love.

You will become a mother but your children will not always be in your custody.

Your son will be put up for adoption.
Accept it.
You have no other choice.

You will be separated from your only daughter.
Accept it.
That’s how life goes.

Pay attention to your gpa.
It is the only thing that will save you.

Take care of your body.
Workout.
Eat right.
Laugh.
They will say that you look 26 when you are 46.
There will be times when your looks are all that you have.
Don’t listen to people who say it is nothing.THIS IS AMERICA.Looks are everything.

Always honor Mama Africa because walking barefoot in her dirt as a child is really all that you have in this world.
Africa is your mother, your guide and your savior.

Remember to walk with your shoulders back and your head upright.
Be grateful for what you have.

You are a world class writer.
Make it work for you.

I love you!
Peace out!

Ramya Ramana - Earning My Stripes

when Spice was too packed
we ended up going to the chinese spot
by Time Square --

we spent 20 dollars on some overpriced
fried rice just to celebrate a different year
around the globe. I had just bought

my outfit from Jamaica ave -- old-gold & burgundy
striped leggings with a sequined black top. I’d say
I was looking thick and pleasing in all the right places;
single but wanted like a hit list.

After dinner, you couldn’t tell us the world was about
to change. Couldn’t tell me that in a few
months i’d be sitting next to a mother
in a hospital bed, close to death. That my

poems would take me to an inauguration and press cycles. That
I’d sit there for the whole year

wishing I could go back to a night
out, spending money I didn’t have, on subtleties,
and
that, was plenty.

LaVonne Roberts

When I think of my 18-year-old self I’m filled with so many emotions: remorse, regret, and remembrance because I was alone. I want to write my 18-year-old self words of wisdom: finish college earlier, vote, don’t make mistakes that will define your life. I can’t imagine away the roadblocks I faced or what a family or support system might have looked like.

I had no voice and now that I’ve found mine—I search for the right words.

When my 18-year-old daughter started college, I returned for the fifth time. Her 18 became “our” 18. I want to protect her from a world on fire from the heat of climate change and the hate of racial, gender, and social injustices, so I tell her I believe in her. There is no failure, nor barrier so epic it will define “our” 18 because we are not alone.

Maria Sakr

On my 18^thbirthday, I hid from my mother that I lit Beirut on fire with my raging youth.

That I had let out all my burning frustrations, down a stranger’s throat, of unwillingly moving to the coast, of paying for my father’s mistakes of devoting everything to empty promises from 1989, of fear dripping down my fishnet thighs—dripping, then flowing in fear of feeling so alive.

I was hoping to destroy the dance floor underneath my fiery, furious, dancing feet.

We went out to a sweet lunch where she talked to me about responsibility, and Lebanese womanhood.

She met my nauseous gaze with rehearsed words of advice, occasionally interrupted by cheeseburger and ketchup breaks.

I, in return, was sipping my chamomile, feeling hungover and terribly burnt out.

“Don’t let them take your fire,” she said, burying her canines into the sesame buns and all the goodness in between.
Current MFA student John Kazanjian Responds to Mike Kelley’s Timeless Painting Show @ Hauser & Wirth
By Creative Writing at The New School / in TNS Lit Scene / December 5, 2019

On Mike Kelley’s Timeless Painting
by John Kazanjian

This Fall semester, Ben Fama conducted a trio of masterclasses on Art Writing for students of the MFA in Creative Writing. A component of this series included two site visits to New York galleries. On November 15th, students met at Hauser & Wirth in order to view, discuss, and write about Timeless Painting, an exhibition featuring the work of the late Mike Kelley.

Mike Kelley’s Timeless Painting exhibition is evocative for both its visualizations as well as its careful excisions, and omissions, of space, perspective, and context. It is an exercise in deconstructing meaning and innovating new ways of initiating dialogue between art and the unconscious.

By depicting only portions of images in a series of sketches, he isolates a dramatic and emotional narrative that guides the viewer’s own pathos into a discussion with the perceivable world’s malleable truths. Near the sketches, he projects the original inspiring images in their entirety onto large screens. But where one would expect clarity and objectivity, the projections zoom in, turn, and blur. The resulting effect is unrooted and dreamlike. The sketches of the incomplete images then seem to represent the barely accessible memories of the unconscious experience.

A series of paintings portrays images of nature and elements of human development. There is a snake and donkey. A nearly naked woman stands with piercing eyes. A child’s face is placed above the face of an adult. A furry creature smiles. Each depiction is rendered uncanny and impotent through stylization in the fashion of collage and caricature. This effect removes the accustomed sets of associations these images would otherwise imply. The donkey and snake are rendered cartoon-like with exaggerations and bright color schemes. The child’s face is set angelically, and the adult face below it is mirrored and shaded green, suggesting a lost primary relationship. The naked woman is painted with black lines and appears almost transparently. The furry creature’s face is combined with violently placed lines of paint, combining innocence with chaos. Kelley dulls the cobra’s teeth by exaggerating it, but the result is a more predatory implication of meaninglessness.

In a series of covers for the defunct magazine Sex to Sexty, Kelley displays scenes of human behavior stripped down to base biological motivations. People are shown doing commonplace things through the lenses of blunt sexuality and defecation. Images of people fornicating are flanked by animals doing the same, but anthropomorphized with human anxieties.
Nothing is sacred here. Kelley removes culture’s ethical norms in order to define them as a thin veneer.

The final group of paintings presents sections of textures. They are close views of commonplace materials that a child might see during times of emotional duress, such as a piece of fabric, a patch of carpet, and the grain of a painted door. The world shrinks to a single spot — a desperate search for sanctuary. Trauma and abuse are mentioned as some of Kelley’s themes.

These pieces suggest the heartbreaking default mindfulness of a child in trauma. This is perhaps the starting point from which the exhibition posits the notion that truth lies not in the uncovering of hidden things, but in the hiding itself.

John Kazanjian is a New York based writer. He is currently earning his MFA in Creative Writing at The New School. His work has appeared in the journal JMWW. Find him on twitter: @johnkazanjian.
Five Questions with Ellen Hagan
By Nicole Drayton / in TNS Lit Scene / November 13, 2019

Ellen Hagan is a writer, performer, and educator. She is the author of two poetry collections: Crowned and Hemisphere, and Watch Us Rise, a YA collaboration with Renée Watson. She has a poetry collection forthcoming from Northwestern University Press in 2020 and a middle grade novel in verse from Bloomsbury in 2021. Ellen's poems and essays can be found on ESPNW, in the pages of Creative Nonfiction, Underwired Magazine, She Walks in Beauty (edited by Caroline Kennedy), Huizache, Small Batch, and Southern Sin. Ellen is the Director of the Poetry & Theatre Departments at the DreamYard Project and directs their International Poetry Exchange Program with Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. She co-leads the Alice Hoffman Young Writer's Retreat at Adelphi University. A proud Kentucky writer, Ellen is a member of the Affrilachian Poets, Conjure Women, and is co-founder of the girlstory collective. She lives with her husband and daughters in New York City.

1. Who is your favorite villain, and who is your favorite protagonist in literature?

My favorite villain is Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty, because I played her in our 7^th grade musical production at Bardstown Middle School in Kentucky. I really went for it too – extreme cackle, high pitched evil witch voice – it was amazing. And let’s be clear. I was not especially cool in the 7^th grade, but playing that role truly helped me to stay afloat. I will forever be grateful for Maleficent.

My favorite protagonists in literature are always young women who are complicated, truth telling, nuanced, whole, brilliant, seeking and alive with the kind of energy that moves a story – the kind that makes things happen. My current favorites are: Jade Butler from Piecing Me Together by Renée Watson, Xiomara Batista from The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo, & Ana Canción from Dominicana by Angie Cruz. I also love Sula and Nel from Sula by Toni Morrison. They capture a kind of intense and wild friendship – and a sense of searching for womanhood and all the ways to find it.

2. When did you know you were a writer?

I was 14 when I started to seriously keep a journal. I wrote about my emotions, my heart, my crushes, the food I ate that day, lists, bad poetry and on and on. It was my buoy through middle and high school. I returned to it to manage my feelings and figure out who I was in the world. When I was 17, I went to a program called Governor’s School for the Arts and got the chance to work with Kelly Norman Ellis and Crystal Wilkinson and it shifted my whole life. I saw that I could actually become a writer, and I was in awe of the kind of artists they were. They were also part of a community called the Affrilachian Poets (artists of color from the Appalachian mountain region), and I saw how their art informed their community and I wanted to be surrounded by people who were taking risks and trying new forms and genres – who were using art to speak back and dialogue. It set me on a path of figuring out how I could do that work as long as possible.

3. What are you currently working on?

I am currently finalizing a poetry manuscript for Northwestern University Press that will come out in the fall of 2020, and working on edits for a middle grade novel in verse that is forthcoming from Bloomsbury in winter 2021 (titles coming soon). I have a young adult book that I am hoping to find a home for soon. I am also part of an incredible writing group that sends poems to each other every April, but we have started to share more frequently, so I am carried by this beautiful group of women who give such powerful and vulnerable work to each other, so I think of that as a continuum in my writing life.

4. How has your writing process changed over the years?

It has gone through many stages. While I was getting my MFA at the New School and working with Darcey Steinke and Dani Shapiro, I was so thrilled to get the time to just write. I had a teaching job, but I was new in the city and felt a kind of energy that was fresh and unending. The group I was in class with was so awesome and we would write, share, go out, talk, scheme, plan, pitch ideas, help shape and craft. It was such a powerfully creative time for me. And then as I started my work as a teaching artist and moving through the non-profit world, my writing morphed as well. I wrote poems, plays with a group called girlstory, one woman shows, short stories, drafted a novel. I was really exploring all the ways to be an artist. I got married in my late 20’s and had two children in my 30’s, so as a new mother, my writing got focused and intense, especially because of the time that gets crunched when you have new little ones. Things have evened out since, and now in my 40’s, I feel a kind of creative drive that is new and exciting. I can’t wait to see what’s next and I am hungry for new books and creative partnerships and visions.

5. Describe your writing style in one sentence.

My writing style is funky, fast, full of energy, alive, alert, non-stop.

Five Questions, by Nicole L. Drayton. Nicole is a writer, screenwriter and independent filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Liberal Arts from The New School, and currently works for the university in the MFA in Creative Writing Program office.
Five Questions with Roberto Montes
By Nicole Drayton / in TNS Lit Scene / November 4, 2019

Roberto Montes is the author of I DON'T KNOW DO YOU, named one of the Best Books of 2014 by NPR. His poetry has appeared in The Lambda Literary Spotlight, Guernica, PEN America Poetry Series, and elsewhere. A chapbook, GRIEVANCES, is now available from the Atlas Review TAR chapbook series.

1. Who is your favorite villain, and who is your favorite protagonist in literature?

In poetry, the only real villain is the "You". My favorite protagonist is the "I" in Bill Knott's "At the Crossroads".

2. When did you know you were a writer?

I have never in my life been confident enough to know I was a writer.

3. What are you currently working on?

A collection of poems, a play, and a (spiritual) handbook for young poets.

4 How has your writing process changed over the years?

I have had to learn how to force myself to write even when I had no desire to. I miss the luxury of having the flexibility to wait until the right moment!

5. Describe your writing style in one sentence.

I write
Like Christopher
Walken
Talks

Five Questions, by Nicole L. Drayton. Nicole is a writer, screenwriter and independent filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Liberal Arts from The New School, and currently works for the university in the MFA in Creative Writing Program office.
Five Questions with Kate Cox
By Nicole Drayton / in TNS Lit Scene / October 22, 2019

Kate Cox is editor of The New Food Economy, an award-winning nonprofit newsroom, where she leads a team of reporters and editors in investigating the forces shaping how and what we eat. She joined TNFE after several years reporting on the American age boom for radio and text as a freelance health reporter. She has written extensively about end-of-life issues, elder incarceration, and the plight of living organ donors, and reported and produced The Hidden Crisis, a three-part radio documentary about the nation’s first emergency shelter for victims of elder abuse. Kate has been a contributor to The Guardian, The Nation, and Huffington Post, and co-created and produced Off the Radar, a travel TV show about two women on a mission to see the world on $1k. @thekatecox

Who is your favorite villain, and who is your favorite protagonist in literature?

I’ve never had a favorite villain on the page. It’s always me; us, the collective “we”—that is, all the psychic scaffolding I’ve built over a lifetime that keeps me from surrendering fully to a story. That’s my villain.

As for a protagonist, I always like to think she’s mine, too. The hallmark of a good protagonist, I suppose, is that they sort of belong to you. For me, it’s Lily Bart from Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth. Because she came at the right time and returned at the right time. Because Lily, even set as she was in late-1800s New York, is a truly modern heroine—that is to stay, a confusing tangle of feminine ambition and sorrow and reticence. She is as I have often feared I am, entombed forever by the decisions I made when I was 29.

When did you know you were a writer?

I’m not sure I ever have. I just figured out one day that the only difference between me and people whose panel bios listed them as a “writer” was that they referred to themselvesas a “writer.” And they wrote. And it didn’t matter how much or for whom. The point is simply that writers write. Do you write? Boom, you’re a writer. And you get to call yourself one. Narrow the gap between perception and reality and anything can be true.

What are you currently working on?

I am editor-in-chief of The New Food Economy, a nonprofit newsroom in NYC, where I lead a staff of reporters and editors in investigating the forces shaping how and what America eats.

How has your writing process changed over the years?

Never had one to speak of. Still don’t. Deadlines help. And one thing that hasn’t changed is I edit as I go. It’s not for everyone. But for me, it’s the only way.

Describe your writing style in one sentence.

Exactly as I speak, when I’m not trying too hard to sound like someone else.

Five Questions, by Nicole L. Drayton. Nicole is a writer, screenwriter and independent filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Liberal Arts from The New School, and currently works for the university in the MFA in Creative Writing Program office.
Fall 2019 Creative Writing Common Reading List
By Nicole Drayton / in TNS Lit Scene / October 14, 2019

The Creative Writing Program is embarking on something new this fall. We are sharing a common reading list with students, faculty, and staff by notable contemporary writers on issues of diversity and inclusion.

This collection of formally different works- essays, stories, graphic narrative, and poetry- is intended to help us think together about how to creatively and productively engage with difficult topics.

Graduate and undergraduate students in the Writer's Life Colloquium course are reflecting on these readings, but we also want to share them widely and encourage conversation and practice.

"To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination. A body of critical theory is now available that explains all the workings of white-supremacist thought and racism. But explanations alone do not bring us to the practice of beloved community."
– bell hooks, "Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope"

"Teaching and Community: A Pedagogy of Hope," bell hooks

"In Defense of a Loaded Word," Ta-Nehisi Coates

"Ta-Nehisi Coates Has an Incredibly Clear Explanation for Why White People Shouldn't Use the N-word," German Lopez

"Real Women Have Bodies," Carmen Maria Machado

"The Bark Mitzvah," Mira Jacob

"Not In a Vacuum," "feeld," and "September," Jos Charles
The Phaistos Project Announces Its First Writer In Residency
By Creative Writing at The New School / in TNS Lit Scene / October 14, 2019

A visual communication design project started at Parsons goes transdisciplinary as it expands to include creative writing students. The first Writer In Residence, MFA 2020 candidate Pune Dracker, shares how the project came about and how others can get involved.

241 characters, 45 different symbols, gilt awhirl in wonky words—

Can you grok this ancient tweet, and does it matter anyway?

Meet the Phaistos Disc, dating from the second millennium BC and unearthed on the island of Crete in 1908. Considered one of the first examples of movable type printing, today the disc provides inspiration to student designers who participate in The Phaistos Project, co-founded by Parsons Professor Pascal Glissmann, Director, AAS Communication Design. Since 2014, students from art & design schools all over the world have responded to an annual call to use research-driven design methodologies to translate their current experiences and concerns—political, economic, ecological, cultural—into their own collections of 45 symbols.

The student projects are astonishing—more than 200 submitted by designers from 43 countries to date. A selected number are archived here.

There’s the 2019 winning collection Earports, in which Stefan Fitze & Maxim Staehelin explore the problem of noise pollution at airports. While researching airline floor plans, the visual communication students discovered that most airports have a visual similarity to firearms.

For her winning set of 45 symbols, Shaping Language, Andrea Sara Gallo recorded the motions that most of us make countless times a day when using a touch-screen keyboard, and turned them into line figures. How elegant—surprisingly!—this dance-y digital handwriting is.

I first became involved in the Phaistos Project as a Research Assistant in Spring 2019, writing and editing website content and completely thrilled because I’d seen the disc in person (it’s on display at the Heraklion Archeological Museum in Crete) while studying in Greece as an undergrad. When Professor Glissmann introduced the idea of a Writer In Residence project that would launch this fall, I was in. Just had to figure out how it would work.

Image, meet text

The Phaistos Project exists in a visual landscape, speaks a purely visual language…45 symbols, after all…so why (and how to) bring words into it? In 2018, when Glissmann was presenting The Phaistos Project at several conferences, he noticed that people of various disciplinary backgrounds were intrigued by the concept and the variety of visuals created by this global community. “That interest made me think about ways to open the project up to researchers of disciplines beyond art and design,” says Glissmann, “and I also had the feeling that we are creating a powerful archive representing current concerns of future generations, and that we should find ways to activate it.”

And since the Phaistos Disc itself is an early, if not the earliest, document of “printed” text, Glissmann explains, “I thought it would be a nice twist to cycle back to it in its pure form, and see how it could be a creative research tool for a writer.”

As we decided on the shape the residency would take, we had a general idea that the writer would dig into the rich archive of projects for inspiration. Glissmann also shared the two rules I had to follow in my written responses to the 45 symbols:

1) The Writer in Residence will produce work that is solely textual, the only images involved being the symbols that the text interacts with; and

2) The work must be short—“micro-publications” that will be shared on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

“Social media is an important aspect for our community, since we are distributed around the globe,” explains Glissmann. “So the idea to use the same channels to disseminate the outcome of the writer's residency seemed to make sense. I was also interested in creating a time-based publication that would be shared over several weeks.”

In addition to these rules, I added some of my own to help define (okay, contain) my project:

3.) I will write poems using poetic forms that somehow relate, i.e. culturally or geographically, to the subject of/objects depicted in the symbols.

And as research and process are important aspects for the designers when developing their sets of 45 symbols,

4) my poems and their forms will be informed by research; and

5) I will document my processes.

I also wanted to remain aware that I was exploring the balance, the word-world, between the time/thought it typically takes to write a tweet/FB status, and the time/thought it would take to write and polish, say, a sonnet. That seems like a lifetime, but still. I wanted to fall somewhere between fussing not too much and just enough.

The 2019 Residency kicked off in September and will consist of 15 micro-publications, one per week. Most recent is “Union Square, Near Best Buy,” a 3-line poem in conversation with designer Chloe Koo’s winning 2014 project, Hanbok, which takes its name and aesthetic from traditional Korean clothing. This was her symbol #23, which she named “Performance.” That made me think of one of my favorite street performers, an animal handler who reads Bible verses to his extremely well-behaved companions. I grabbed little bits of language directly from an article on him that I found online.

Noah exhibits two dogs, two cats and three guinea pigs on the streets
Some argue his altar-like menagerie is cruelty
but the guinea pigs sit so still and peacefully—are they real?!

In this sijo, a Korean poetic form older than haiku, the first line introduces the situation, the second develops the theme or introduces a turn in argument, and the third line presents a twist and conclusion. Each line is somewhere between 14-16 syllables.

I explored the silva for my Week 2 poem, “Gansitos,” written in response to Julio Aguirre’s extraordinary set of symbols that celebrate Mexico’s culture.

This traditional Spanish form can be any number of lines and any number of couplets, but they must have 7 or 11 syllables each—a suitable container for this micro-publication that also incorporates found language (including phrases from a list of ingredients in Gansitos, popular Mexican crème-filled snack cakes).

Are you in the mood for something delicious?
Take your 8 million and your Twinkie defense

With all your dirty money
You can buy almost 1 million 10 thousand

Yummy artificially flavored crème-filled
chocolate-flavored snack cakes.

Build the walls of your arteries with guar gum,

Undear Mr. President

Following the poem you can see the simple template I created to document the process.

And the Next Writer In Residence Is…

The Phaistos Project will be looking to identify writers for the next residency in late spring/early summer 2020, with the aim of publishing a series of micro-publications in the fall. Definitely a dream project, especially if you enjoy collaborating and writing about art/design/culture. You’ll get free creative rein, yet the guidelines you do have are clear and measurable, and you’ll also be treated to a wonderful presence on the Phaistos Project website.

“We are really interested in writers of diverse backgrounds,” says Glissmann, “and will try to switch the writing approach for each residency—from poetry to fiction to journalism, for example.” If you will be a current student in the fall, are interested in exploring transdisciplinary work and are open to using social media as your platform, stay tuned to the Creative Writing Weekly Newsletter for an announcement of the call for the next resident. Start thinking micro!

You can always find us here:

The Phaistos Project/45 Symbols on Facebook

The Phaistos Project/45 Symbols on Instagram

The Phaistos Project/45 Symbols on Twitter
Five Questions with Charlotte Slivka
By Nicole Drayton / in TNS Lit Scene / October 9, 2019

* Illustration Credit: Lisa Brown

Charlotte Slivka is from Manhattan and now lives in Brooklyn with her daughter, two cats and her partner (cast in order of appearance). She likes to think about the connections between nature and urbanity and the universal truths that bring these seemingly disparate experiences together. In her past life, she was a guitar player in a punk rock band

1. Who is your favorite villain, and who is your favorite protagonist in literature?

I really hate to do favorites. I know this question is designed for the readers to know who I am or where I stand in literature so I don't hate the question but I hate my inability to answer it. I think my favorite type of villain is someone I can see a little of myself in. Someone who got in a bad way but no one was there to help them in their downward spiral, their Villanous nature the result losing all the good tools on the way down. I suppose you wouldn't have a villain if there were some possibility of healing left in them and you need villains to show what struggling to be good looks like. Still, I can't help but feel for the villains. Human nature is so frail. We can all be villains at some point.

My favorite type of protagonist makes a lot of mistakes and almost gets killed a bunch of times. Like me. They make you cringe for them a lot in the reading so when they get something right you really feel proud, you feel it more then they do. My favorite type of protagonist wins when everyone says they can't. The underdog, the ALMOST VILLAIN! Human nature is so frail, it can go either way.

2. When did you know you were a writer?

I knew I was a writer when it became obvious I couldn't do anything else. I tried a lot of other things and resisted writing for a very long time. I come from a family of artists and everyone had their own artistic identities, so I thrashed around in the world looking for mine. I did a bunch of cool things but nothing ever felt as "true" as writing did. I had always journaled and wrote poems and then song lyrics when I was doing music, but I never pushed myself as a writer until after my daughter was born. And then it just stayed my secret, my ace in the hole (whatever that means). Finally, I came out to my mother with a piece I felt really spoke to who I was as a writer and I honestly have to say she was shocked. She gave me the permission I needed and I have not looked back!

3. What are you currently working on?

Family memoir, personal essay are the meat and potatoes of what I write but now and I'm working on infusing that writing with poetry so I guess I'm working toward Hybrid writing. I love the distillation of meaning that can happen in a poem, a single poem can hold an entire story. Some stories can't be told straight on, some stories need to be experienced. That's what I'm working toward. Also, I would love to be able to tell a straight Nonfiction story with facts and research, that is a HUGE challenge for me because I get really stuck in my head (in case you haven't noticed).

4 How has your writing process changed over the years?

I'm trying to work my way towards discipline and I'm trying to take myself seriously. I'm learning to trust myself and I'm learning to trust that my writing is good. Those beliefs help give me more confidence to take risks. When I just wrote for myself it didn't matter, I was not trying to impress anyone. Now that I go to school with the goal of creating public writing, I'm having to work through the steps of what is acceptable to other people with very conscious (and sometimes excruciating) writing. Where I am now? I'm trying to get back to my natural impulse but infused with intention, good grammar and punctuation.

5. Describe your writing style in one sentence.

Spillage in the sand that is then shaped with small hands.

Five Questions, by Nicole L. Drayton. Nicole is a writer, screenwriter and independent filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Liberal Arts from The New School, and currently works for the university in the MFA in Creative Writing Program office.
100 Books by Creative Writing Alumni
By Creative Writing at The New School / in Graduates, MFA, TNS Lit Scene / September 27, 2019

Guest post by Robert Polito, Founding Director of The New School Graduate Writing Program, and past President of the Poetry Foundation (2013-2015). List compiled by Justin Sherwood, MFA Creative Writing '12.

On Wednesday, October 2, as part of The New School's Centennial Festival, Roberto Polito and faculty member John Reed will discuss the history of the Creative Writing Program and Reed's new book A Drama in Time. The event is free and open to all. Register now.

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My gratitude to Justin Sherwood — Senior Director, Communications and Strategic Initiatives at The New School and MFA Creative Writing alumnus — for convening this luminous roster of “100 Books by Creative Writing Alumni” for The New School Centennial. All of us in the Creative Writing Program could obsess over our own personal, even idiosyncratic recapitulations of exemplary MFA alumni publications, as Justin’s erudite survey inevitably designates just a scintillating fraction of the noteworthy poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and writing for children and young adults created by our graduates.

Our MFA Creative Writing program dates from the mid-1990s, but The New School has been a vital center for writing and the instruction of writing since 1931, when Gorham Munson, a Manhattan editor and influential partisan of the Alfred Stieglitz circle, introduced his legendary workshop in creative writing. Munson’s was a professional writing program, originating not in an English literature department, but instead out of the magazines, newspapers, and publishing houses of New York City and Greenwich Village. “We can’t claim a first,” Munson recalled. “Credit for the ‘first’ goes to Amherst for inviting Robert Frost to be a poet-in-residence. But when The New School began to offer writing courses, the professional writer was a rare animal on the classroom platform. We led the way in revolutionizing the teaching of writing. For notice that all of us in those years were practicing writers. We washed the typewriter ink off our hands as we started for class.”

From the outset, The New School Writing Program accented the importance of working with influential voices of the day. As a result, the historical faculty reads like a who’s-who of 20th-century literature, with instructors spanning W.H. Auden, Kenneth Koch, Stanley Kunitz, May Sarton, Horace Gregory, Wiliam Goyen, Richard Yates, Alfred Kazin, Carolyn Kizer, Daniel Halpern, Gilbert Sorrentino, and David Markson.

When we designed the MFA Program, one of our aims was to touch base with this intensive professional tradition of writing at The New School, although not in any readymade, nostalgic way, but instead to reimagine that tradition’s turn-of-the-century equivalent. If you studied writing and literature here in the early 1960s, you might have taken classes with Robert Lowell, Marguerite Young, Frank O’Hara, Kay Boyle, and Amiri Baraka. Our intention was to assemble a faculty of established and emerging writers that could persuasively be described as the contemporary analogue of this resplendent legacy. A faculty committed to teaching and students — yet also a faculty accomplishing their own creative work in the world.

Decisive to this vision was the notion of reading as a writer. Such reading from the inside out engages craft, language, form, style, and structure, and what across our reading can be summoned and reinvented for our work. But reading as a writer also opens up into the vastest possible challenges and conundrums of politics, culture, and history. A touchstone text for us was Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark. There Morrison writes:

“But then I stopped reading as a reader and began to read as a writer...I began to see how the literature I revered, the literature I loathed, behaved in its encounter with racial ideology. American literature could not help being shaped by that encounter. Yes, I wanted to identify those moments when American literature was complicit in the fabrication of racism, but equally important, I wanted to see when literature exploded and undermined it. Still, those were minor concerns. Much more important was to contemplate how Africanist personae, narrative, and idiom moved and enriched the text in self-conscious ways, to consider what the engagement meant for the work of the writer’s imagination...As a writer reading I came to realize the obvious: the subject of the dream is the dreamer...In other words, I began to rely on my knowledge of how books get written, how language arrives; my sense of how and why writers abandon or take on certain aspects of their project.”

Our MFA Writing Program proposed to honor The New School founding aspirations of the artist as public intellectual. Alongside the writing workshops and literature seminars, we saw ourselves as a community resource, with an extensive, diverse public reading series, and many creative partnerships — PEN America, Cave Canem, the Poetry Society of America, the Academy of American Poets, and the National Book Foundation.

This is a powerful moment to be a writer, since so much impressive work is now appearing across styles, aesthetics, and genres. As Justin’s “100 Books” list manifests, Creative Writing Program alumni are steadily advancing through our complex, volatile, and exciting new literary world, animating their social media, launching their magazines, reading series, and arts organizations, releasing their music and films, and of course — what else? — publishing their books.

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100 Books by Creative Writing Alumni

Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father by Alysia Abbott (’03), a recipient of the Madame Figaro Prix Heroine and the Stonewall Book Award by the American Library Association

2Brides 2Be by Laura Leigh Abby (’13), called “the ultimate and thoroughly user friendly 'how to' lesbian wedding guide” by Midwest Book Review

The Optimistic Decade by Heather Able (’01), hailed as “funny and light even under the weight of its Big Ideas” by New York Times Book Review

The Atomic City Girls by Janet Beard (’05), celebrated as “approachable, intelligent, and highly satisfying historical fiction” in a starred review by Booklist

Arts and Entertainments by Christopher Beha (’06), called a “tender intellectual memoir” by the New York Times Book Review

A Box of Longing with Fifty Drawers by Jennifer Benka (’07), noted in Lambda Literary as “fresh and captivating...daring, even, at times, brash”

Hothouse Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire by Margot Berwin (’05), a “pick of the week” and recipient of a starred review by Publishers Weekly

They Don’t Kill You Because They’re Hungry, They Kill You Because They’re Full by Mark Bibbins (’98), a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year

The Dog Fighter by Marc Bojanowski (’03), hailed as “the most exciting debut…by an American writer since Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides” by Geoff Dyer

Tyrell by Coe Booth (’06), winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature

Solemn by Kalisha Buckhanon (’03), called a “standout novel...anchored by its vulnerable and brave heroine” by Publishers Weekly

The Vast Fields of Ordinary by Nick Burd (’06), recipient of a starred review by Booklist

Hurricane Child by Kheryn Callender (’14), winner of the Stonewall Book Award from the American Library Association

Old Silk Road by Brandon Caro (’16), called “an invaluable primary document that illuminates a violent hall of our history in the way that only fiction can” by the Miami Herald

Forever, or a Long, Long Time by Caela Carter (’12), hailed as a “poignant, moving, and riveting” by IndieReader

Melt by Selene Castrovilla (’04), called “A fresh, emotionally complex bildungsroman” by Kirkus Reviews

Tiny Pretty Things by Sona Charaipotra and Dhonielle Clayton (both ’12), called “a page–turner with a heart” by Kirkus Reviews

The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton (’12), named to the YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults List and a Booklist Editor’s Choice

Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close (’06), a national bestseller

What I Thought I Knew by Alice Eve Cohen (’99), noted as a “darkly hilarious...an unexpected bundle of joy” by O: The Oprah Magazine

I Was Not Born by Julia Cohen (’08), one of Entropy Magazine’s Best Nonfiction Books of the Year

The Ruining by Anna Collomore (’08), hailed as “A compelling psychological thriller” in a starred review by Kirkus Reviews

Brink by Shanna Compton (’02), called “all sorts of breakthrough” by Publishers Weekly

Outerborrough Blues by Andrew Cotto (’08), hailed as “a novel that reads like Raymond Chandler taking dictation from Walt Whitman” by Publishers Weekly

Having Been An Accomplice by Laura Cronk (’04), winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize from Persea Books

The Antiques by Kris D’Agostino (’06), praised in the New York Times: “There’s not a sluggish moment in Kris D’Agostino’s second novel . . . with sharp, funny dialogue that never seems formulaic”

Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler (’14), a national bestselling novel called "Brilliantly written” and “Outstanding” by The New York Times Book Review, and adapted into a television series on Starz with Danler serving as Executive Producer

In This Way I Was Saved by Brian DeLeeuw (’07), called “terrifying and terrifyingly good” by Vanity Fair

The January Children by Safia Elhillo (’15), winner of the 2016 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets and a 2018 Arab American Book Award

The Jewel by Amy Ewing (’12), a national bestseller and recipient of a starred review in Booklist

Fantasy by Ben Fama (’15), one of Flavorwire’s “50 Best American Poetry Books of the Decade”

Karma Gone Bad by Jenny Feldon, called “heartfelt, frequently very funny and always extremely well written” by Travelati Magazine

You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon (’00), winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Fiction

The Matrimonial Flirtations of Emma Kaulfield by Anne Fishbeyn (’04), called a “compelling new voice" by Kirkus Reviews

Deep: The Story of Skiing and the History of Snow by Porter Fox (’04), hailed as “a powerful call to action for anyone who cares about the future of our planet” by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore

Check the Rhyme: An Anthology of Female Poets & Emcees by DuEwa Frazier (’11), Nominated for NAACP Image Award in Outstanding Literary Work - Poetry

King of the Worlds by M. Thomas Gammarino (’05), hailed for its “hints of other greats like Kurt Vonnegut and David Foster Wallace...represent some of the funnest aspects of a novel that takes its fun pretty seriously” by Entropy Magazine

Sunshine State by Sarah Gerard (’12), a New York Times Critics’ Best Books of the Year and longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay

The Mentor by Lee Matthew Goldberg (’06), called “a sharp and bitter satire” by Kirkus Reviews

The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman (’99), a national bestseller and winner of the Hammett Prize from the International Association of Crime Writers

A Generous Latitude by Lenea Grace (’12), winner of the Walrus Poetry Prize

A Tangle of Knots by Lisa Graff (’06), longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and recipient of a starred review by Kirkus Reviews

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han (’05), a New York Times bestselling novel, adapted into one of Netflix’s “most viewed original films ever” with Han serving as Executive Producer

Watch Us Rise by Ellen Hagan (’03) and Renee Watson (BA Liberal Arts ’09), called “A highly needed work for the #MeToo movement” in a starred review from School Library Journal

OCD Love Story by Corey Ann Haydu (’12), recipient of a starred review by Publishers Weekly, a Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books Blue Ribbon Selection, and Junior Library Guild Selection

In Search of the Movement: The Struggle for Civil Rights Then and Now by Benjamin Hedin (’04), called “thoughtful essays on this significant struggle, ongoing and continuous” by Kirkus Reviews

Charlie, Presumed Dead by Anne Heltzel (’08), called “A compelling read, one that will provoke adventure-lust, a need to experience the strange, the fearful, and the unknown” by the Boston Globe

The Butcher’s Sons by Scott Alexander Hess (’09), one of Kirkus Review’s Best Books of the Year

A Scarecrow’s Bible by Martin Hyatt (’99), winner of the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award from the Publishing Triangle

The Sleepwalker’s Guide To Dancing by Mira Jacob (’03), named one of the best books of the year by Boston Globe

The Doctor’s Wife by Luis Jaramillo (’02), winner of the Dzanc Books Short Story Contest

Instant Classic by erica kaufman (’03), called “beautiful, thoughtful, a music for the eye, heart, soul and mind” by Thurston Moore

Everything You Need To Survive an Apocalypse by Lucas Klauss (’07), one of Children’s Book Council’s Best Children's Books of the Year

Paint My Body Red by Heidi R. Kling (’01), hailed as a “stunning novel” by Novel Novice

Flying Couch by Amy Kurzweil (’13), a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

My Dead by Amy Lawless (’07), celebrated in the Literary Review as “poetry that, in speaking to the dead and in speaking about death, urges us to go on living”

Listening for Lucca by Suzanne LeFleur (’08), celebrated as “a heartbreaking and honest look at family trauma that is devastating, humorous, sad, and, most of all, real” in a starred review by Booklist

Tell Me How This Ends Well by David Samuel Levinson (’01), called “a moving account of the rich complexities of maternal love and the bewildering ecstasies of sibling rivalry” by the San Francisco Gate

Ida, Always by Caron Levis (’08), a Bank Street College of Education Best Children’s Book of the Year

And Then There Were Crows by Alcy Leyva (’16), hailed as “a high-energy debut” by Publishers Weekly

The Crystal Ribbon by Celeste Lim (‘15), called “....a hopeful coming-of-age story” by Kirkus Reviews

All Back Full by Robert Lopez (’99), called “a remarkable achievement” by Green Mountains Review

Party Knife by Dan Magers (’05), noted as “funny...logically, in how it organizes its thoughts, surprising the first time and then impressive in a different way the second time” by Vice

Blue Hallelujahs by Cynthia Manick (’07), winner of the Lascaux Prize in Collected Poetry

The Things That Need Doing by Sean Manning (’03), called “honest and gut-wrenching” by Kirkus Reviews

Pin Action: Small-Time Gangsters, High-Stakes Gambling, and the Teenage Hustler Who Became a Bowling Champion by Gianmarc Manzione (’04), recipient of a starred review in Booklist

A Million in Prizes by Justin Marks (’04), selected by Carl Phillips for the New Issues Poetry Prize

Outline of My Lover by Douglas Martin (’01), named an International Book of the Year in the Times Literary Supplement

The Unexpected Everything by Morgan Matson (’07), a New York Times bestseller

Sold by Patricia McCormick (’99), finalist for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature

I Don’t Know Do You by Roberto Montes (’12), one of NPR’s Best Books of the Year and a finalist for the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry from the Publishing Triangle

North Haven by Sarah Moriarty (’03), hailed as “a magnificent debut” by “a gifted author of singular talent” by Library Journal

Eulogy by Ken Murray (’09), called a “powerful, poignant debut” by the Globe and Mail

A Model Year by Gina Myers (’05), hailed as “that rare collection of poetry that wholly actualizes for its reader the sensation of getting into an author’s head” by Coldfront Magazine

The Do-Over by Kathleen Ossip (’98), a New York Times Editor’s Choice

Natural History Rape Museum by Danielle Pafunda (’02), hailed as “major triumph in feminist poetry” by Pank Magazine

Between Land and Sea: The Atlantic Coast and the Transformation of New England by Christopher Pastore (’03), called “an exceptional history that weaves broad and compelling theories with impressive, place-specific research” by American Historical Review

Livability by Jon Raymond (’02), winner of the Oregon Book Award

Repetition by Rebecca Reilly (’98), recipient of a starred review and selected by Maggie Nelson as a best book of 2015 in Publishers Weekly

The Woolgrower’s Companion by Joy Rhoades (’05), called “A wonderful new voice in literary rural fiction” by Australian Women's Weekly

To Assume A Pleasing Shape by Joseph Salvatore (’98), called “magnetic and propulsive” by Rain Taxi

Rabbit Punch! by Greg Santos (’09), praised by Small Press Book Review for “offer[ing] an admirable finesse to the reader who craves good verse”

Dear Lucy by Julie Sarkissian (’07), called a “captivating debut” by Publishers Weekly

Drowning Lessons by Peter Selgin (’05), winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Fiction

Problems by Jade Sharma (’12), one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of the Year

Dirty Secret by Jessie Sholl (’98), called "a compelling and compassionate perspective on an illness suffered by an estimated six million Americans” by Booklist

Girl Out of Water by Laura Silverman (’15), called “a novel that reads like a warm summer afternoon...a charming novel full of diverse characters” by Paste Magazine

Treat Yourself! by Jessica Siskin (’16), featured on the Today Show and The Rachael Ray Show and called “genius” by Refinery29

Getting Lucky by Nicole Steinberg (’06), noted for poems that “question and re-envision traditional standards for beauty and femininity” by Bitch magazine

Refugees by Catherine Stine (’03), called a “powerful” and “accomplished” novel by Booklist

Vaclav and Lena by Haley Tanner (’07), called a “wonderful and wrenching debut novel” by The New York Times

Flings by Justin Taylor (’07), an Amazon Best Book of the Month\

Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee by Mary G. Thompson (’12), called “an intelligent, tense psychological drama” by Kirkus Reviews

Dear Almost by Matthew Thorburn (’01), winner of the Lascaux Prize in Collected Poetry

What You Left Behind by Jessica Verdi (’12), recipient of a starred review by School Library Journal

The List by Siobhan Vivian (’06), a New York Times bestseller

Of Being Dispersed by Simone White (’06), winner of the 2017 Whiting Award for Poetry

For Single Mothers Working As Train Conductors by Laura Esther Wolfson (’07), winner of the 2017 Iowa Prize for Literary Nonfiction

Janey’s Arcadia by Rachel Zolf (’11), nominated for a Lambda Literary Award

Where I Stay by Andrew Zornoza (’07), called “a marvelous first book” with “style and grace” in a review by elimae
How to Make the Most of the Brooklyn Book Festival (And Other “Bookish” Events”)
By Creative Writing at The New School / in TNS Lit Scene / September 20, 2019

Guest post by MFA student Kate Tooley

Brooklyn Book Festival. Photo by Jasmina Tomic.

When I first moved to New York almost four years ago, I knew I wanted to write, but I also was aware that I knew next to nothing about the world of publishing or how to get involved in New York’s literary community. I’d spent five years doing theater and I had a lot of catching up to do; I started going to readings, events and conferences, but without a lot of direction or intention. The Slice conference in Brooklyn especially helped me find my feet (and they have great scholarship options for students!), but there are tons of great events in NYC and beyond, and I’ve found that the times I’ve gotten the most out of them were the times I was most strategic and thoughtful about what I wanted to get out of them. With Brooklyn Book Festival going on this week, I wanted to share a bit of what I learned through trial and error, that will hopefully help you skip some of the error part of attending “bookish” events.

Research and Plan
Putting a couple of hours in beforehand to research the people who are going to be at and is invaluable. At conferences, knowing which agents you want to strike up a conversation with and which panels they’re speaking on is a great way to get an idea if they’re someone you want to query. It will also save you from missing seeing a favorite author or literary figure who may be making only a quick appearance. This year I wasn’t on top of things (thanks MFA brain) and I missed Monique Truong. I may never get over it.

Work on Your Elevator Pitch
The big things we have in common at lit events are typically that we’re all readers and mostly writers. Especially at conferences, people are going to ask you what you’re working on. It’s a great opportunity to practice getting that answer down to a few sentences instead of the half hour long storytelling event it tends to be. (Is this just me? It might just be me.) It’s an easy way to start a conversation and will teach you what people find interesting about your story, what might be selling points you never thought of, and what aspects of it might not be as clear as you think.

Plan to Attend Readings and Panels Outside Your Special Area of Interest
It’s good to hit panels that speak to your specific concerns, but it can be surprisingly useful to go to one or two that might not initially jump out at you. For example, I recently attended a panel on literary non-profits, and not only was it a great way to discover volunteer opportunities, I learned a lot about an aspect of the writing world I was unfamiliar with.

Talk to Everyone
It’s easy to think your only goal should be to meet agents and authors when you’re at an event, but I’ve learned so much from conversations with other attendees. I’ve found writers whose careers I’m still following and whose work I love, and made friends that have become invaluable writing buddies and great resources.

Talk to Agents
This one is conference specific, but important. I know I said don’t only talk to agents, but seriously do actually talk to agents. That said, you’ll save everyone a lot of time if you do some research beforehand: know who works with writers in your genre, who’s sold a book you love, who is passionate about some topic or issue you care about. If you have something genuine to say (instead of just spamming), I’ve typically found agents who come to conferences are more than happy to engage (and I’ve even gotten query requests I wasn’t expecting).

Participate
If you’re comfortable, speak up in sessions; ask questions after readings; chat with authors after their panels; get a book signed; do a round table talk; or strike up a conversation with the folks manning the booths at Brooklyn Book Fest. I (seriously) understand the urge to keep to yourself and the difficulty of approaching strangers, but I’ve also learned the value of pushing outside my comfort zone one small interaction at a time.

Embrace the Ambiguity
Agents and editors are individuals with unique preferences, methods, and pet peeves, and nearly every author I’ve heard speak has had a unique career trajectory. If I’ve learned anything after four years of going to events, it’s that if you’re looking for one set of sure-fire rules or a magic recipe for success, you’re not going to find it. One agent’s “must”, is another’s “never”. The thing that got one author in the door left another with the door shut in their face. (The only thing everyone seems to agree on is that you should follow submission rules and make sure you’re writing something you really, deeply care about.)

Take Care of Yourself
Events large and small can all be overwhelming, so making sure your mind and body have what they need is key to a positive experience. Try to get some sleep beforehand and bring snacks and water; if you need a few minutes to yourself, take them. Anxiety is a very real thing, and there’s value in showing up, no matter what level of participation you’re comfortable with. If you don’t have the spoons to talk to agents or authors in person, you can always follow them on Twitter or Instagram; live tweeting from an event is a lower-stress way to establish some contact and get on their radar (caveat: do make sure quotes are accurate and remember that most authors don’t appreciate being tagged in negative reviews). Additionally, following folks on social media beforehand can help you decide whether or not you’re comfortable approaching them in person.

More than anything over the last four years, going to events has helped me to feel like I was part of a community and helped me stay motivated, connected, and active. It has been the thing that gives me a fresh jolt of energy when I need it most. As a grad student, I have the privilege of being a part of a great community here at TNS, but I’m grateful to know that after graduation there will be conferences and readings, and Book Festivals to help me continue building my writing family.
National Book Award 2019 Longlist
By Creative Writing at The New School / in TNS Lit Scene / September 16, 2019

(Updated Friday, September 19)

Each morning this week, National Book Foundation is announcing one of the five Longlists for the 70th National Book Awards! We'll be updating this post as the books are announced.

Today we are excited to announce the titles on the 2019 National Book Awards Longlist for Fiction.

Taffy Brodesser-Akner, “Fleishman Is in Trouble”
Random House / Penguin Random House

Susan Choi, “Trust Exercise”
Henry Holt & Company / Macmillan Publishers

Kali Fajardo-Anstine, “Sabrina & Corina: Stories”
One World / Penguin Random House

Marlon James, “Black Leopard, Red Wolf”
Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House

Laila Lalami, “The Other Americans”
Pantheon Books / Penguin Random House

Kimberly King Parsons, “Black Light: Stories”
Vintage / Penguin Random House

Helen Phillips, “The Need”
Simon & Schuster

Julia Phillips, “Disappearing Earth”
Alfred A. Knopf / Penguin Random House

Ocean Vuong, “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”
Penguin Press / Penguin Random House

Colson Whitehead, “The Nickel Boys”
Doubleday / Penguin Random House

Nonfiction

Hanif Abdurraqib, “Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest”
University of Texas Press

Sarah M. Broom, “The Yellow House”
Grove Press / Grove Atlantic

Tressie McMillan Cottom, “Thick: And Other Essays”
The New Press

Carolyn Forché, “What You Have Heard is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance”
Penguin Press / Penguin Random House

Patrick Radden Keefe, “Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland”
Doubleday / Penguin Random House

David Treuer, “The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present”
Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House

Greg Grandin, “The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America”
Metropolitan Books / Macmillan Publishers

Iliana Regan, “Burn the Place: A Memoir”
Agate Midway / Agate Publishing, Inc.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, “Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership”
The University of North Carolina Press

Albert Woodfox with Leslie George, “Solitary”
Grove Press / Grove Atlantic

Poetry

Dan Beachy-Quick, “Variations on Dawn and Dusk”
Omnidawn Publishing

Jericho Brown, “The Tradition”
Copper Canyon Press

Toi Derricotte, “‘I’: New and Selected Poems”
University of Pittsburgh Press

Camonghne Felix, “Build Yourself a Boat”
Haymarket Books

Ilya Kaminsky, “Deaf Republic”
Graywolf Press

Ariana Reines, “A Sand Book”
Tin House Books

Mary Ruefle, “Dunce”
Wave Books

Carmen Giménez Smith, “Be Recorder”
Graywolf Press

Arthur Sze, “Sight Lines”
Copper Canyon Press

Brian Teare, “Doomstead Days”
Nightboat Books

Translated Literature

László Krasznahorkai, “Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming”
Translated by Ottilie Mulzet
New Directions

Scholastique Mukasonga, “The Barefoot Woman”
Translated by Jordan Stump
Archipelago Books

Yoko Ogawa, “The Memory Police”
Translated by Stephen Snyder
Pantheon Books / Penguin Random House

Pajtim Statovci, “Crossing”
Translated by David Hackston
Pantheon Books / Penguin Random House

Olga Tokarczuk, “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead”
Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House

Young People's Literature

Kwame Alexander and Kadir Nelson, “The Undefeated”
Versify / Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Laurie Halse Anderson, “Shout”
Viking Books for Young Readers / Penguin Random House

Akwaeke Emezi, “Pet”
Make Me a World / Penguin Random House

Cynthia Kadohata, “A Place to Belong”
Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books / Simon & Schuster

Jason Reynolds, “Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks”
Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books / Simon & Schuster

Randy Ribay, “Patron Saints of Nothing”
Kokila / Penguin Random House

Laura Ruby, “Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All”
Balzer + Bray / HarperCollins Publishers
Five Questions With Joyce Chen
By Nicole Drayton / in TNS Lit Scene / September 13, 2019

Joyce Chen is a writer/editor/creator from LA who spent a decade in NYC before relocating back to the West Coast in fall 2017. She has covered entertainment and human interest stories for Rolling Stone, Refinery29, the New York Daily News, and People, among others, and her creative writing credits include LitHub, Narratively, and Barrelhouse, among others. She is interested in topics like time, silence, and liminal spaces as they relate to agency, power, and intercultural understanding. She is one of the cofounders of The Seventh Wave, a bicoastal arts and literary nonprofit, and holds an MFA from The New School and a BA in journalism and psychology from USC. Joyce is currently working on a collection of essays that examine the friction that arises from living with two sets of values that are often at odds with one another — the American ideals of independence and self-fulfillment and the Taiwanese values of family, community, and sacrifice — as experienced through different modes of time perception.

1. Who is your favorite villain, and who is your favorite protagonist in literature?

For some reason, seeing the words "villain" and "protagonist" always throws me back to my elementary school days and checking out stacks and stacks of books from the library. My favorite villain is easily the Grand High Witch from Roald Dahl's The Witches, because she represented to me then, and represents to me now, this idea of adults who want to quash the childlike qualities that we all have within us. I was terrified of her as a kid, and she's still one of the first characters I think of in conjunction with the word "villain." In terms of a favorite protagonist, then, I think I've always been a big fan of Matilda, from the Roald Dahl book of the same name, because she had magical powers that she used for good. When I was younger, I was convinced that I could make objects move with supreme concentration, too, and that sort of magical thinking still lingers a bit now into adulthood.

2. When did you know you were a writer?

I've always been a big reader, and wore thick lenses by the time I was seven. Writing my own stories, however, was another thing entirely. I majored in journalism in undergrad, and always enjoyed learning about other people, their stories, their lives, their beliefs -- but never fully felt comfortable turning the lens inward. It actually wasn't until I took a chance and applied to creative writing MFA programs and was accepted that I started to consider myself a writer. Now, in retrospect, I realize that I likely knew that I was a writer all the way back when I was a big reader, because reading taught me different ways to see the world, which has definitely come in handy now as a writer.

3. What are you currently working on?

Presently, I'm working on a collection of essays that revolve around the concepts of time and time perception, as it is understood in both Eastern and Western cultures. As a second-generation Taiwanese American, I've grown up in the liminal space between two different sets of values, and I'm curious to explore the ways in which many second-generation kids-now-adults experience this fusion of cultures, trying to strike the right balance between assimilation and pride in one's ancestral history. I'm especially interested in diving into the idea of loss when it comes to children of immigrants: what is lost with the passage of time (language, knowledge, sense of collective self), and what is ultimately gained from the friction that arises from two different ways of being?

4 How has your writing process changed over the years?

This is a super interesting question. I think over the years, I've learned that discipline and consistency are just as much a part of the creative process as the actual creating itself. Whereas when I was younger, I relied more on moments of inspiration to dictate when I created, I now purposefully set aside time and space in my day to sit still and confront whatever it is that I'm hoping to create. Sometimes this produces pages and pages of work; other times, it produces nothing. But the important thing, I think, is to place value in myself and in my process, and to understand that carving out that time is not only important, but necessary. It's important to show up for yourself every day.

5. Describe your writing style in one sentence.

My writing style is rooted in emotion, driven by rhythm, and set freest when it's given new pastures to explore.

Five Questions, by Nicole L. Drayton. Nicole is a writer, screenwriter and independent filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Liberal Arts from The New School, and currently works for the university in the MFA in Creative Writing Program office.
THE NEW SCHOOL @ BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL
By Nicole Drayton / in 12th Street, Faculty, Graduates, Lit, MFA, Riggio Honors, TNS Lit Scene / September 10, 2019

Writing at The New School is proud to be featured at the Brooklyn Book Festival once again this year! Find us at the book fair on Sunday, September 22nd from 10AM to 6PM (booth #335), where MFA and Riggio students will be in attendance to represent the program.

Outside of the book fair, 9 faculty and alumni will be featured in events throughout the day. A complete list of participants and their events are below:

Jennifer Baker - The Art of Belonging 10AM

Jen Benka - New Works A Poetry Reading 3PM

Andrew Cotto - Lost and Found: Writing Through Social Burnout 3PM

Siddhartha Deb - Second Read: Susan Sontag 11AM

Kristina Forest - Love is the Journey not the Destination, 1PM

Jenny Han - Feminism in YA 4PM

Marwa Helal - Poetry at the Crossroads 12PM

Mira Jacob - We Need to Talk 3PM, The Apple and the Tree 5PM

Robert Lopez - St. Francis College presents Active Imagination 1PM

Mychal Denzel Smith - Impeachment vs. Election: How to Confront a Lawless President 3PM

Brenda Wineapple - Impeachment vs. Election: How to Confront a Lawless President presented by the New York Review of Books 3PM

Randy Winston - The Apple and the Tree, 5PM
Five Questions With Laura Cronk and David Wilson
By Nicole Drayton / in TNS Lit Scene / September 5, 2019

Laura Cronk is a poet and essayist and is the Associate Director of the Creative Writing Program at The New School. David Wilson is a teacher, writer, and the lead singer, guitarist and songwriter of the band Miss Ohio. Both are alumni of the MFA Creative Writing Program.

1. Who is your favorite villain, and who is your favorite protagonist in literature?

LC: I always love hating the “you” in a good hate poem. Julie Sheehan’s Hate Poem is a favorite. One thing the Trump era is giving us is a renaissance in excellent hate poetry.

As for a favorite protagonist, I’ll say that the “I” in Ocean Vuong’s Night Sky with Exit Wounds means a lot to me, as both a writer and a person.

DW: My favorite villain is Iago. He seems to view evil as his great creative act. I’ve read Othello dozens of times and I’m still horrified by him.

I first read James Agee’s novel A Death in the Family when I was in high school. I’m not sure I have a favorite protagonist, but the boy in that book is probably the character I think about the most.

2. When did you know you were a writer?

LC: I realized young that reading was a way of listening in on the best conversations. I’m not exactly sure when I realized that writing was a way of joining in.

DW: I love books and I view writing as a part of being a reader.

3. What are you currently working on?

LC: I just submitted a manuscript of poems and half of them, circle around adolescence and memory. I’m also working on several essays.

DW: I’m busy making a podcast where I interview musicians about their favorite writers. I’m also writing and recording music. I’ve never really written poetry before, but this past year I’ve been part of a writing group that forces me to write one poem a week.

LC: And now he has a whole manuscript of poems!

4. How has your writing process changed over the years?

LC: Writing used to accumulate mysteriously for me and it still does to an extent. The more demands I have on my time, though, the more conscious I am of making it happen. Right now I mostly write on the train. I love giving myself challenges, like writing for thirty minutes every day for a month, etc. A dear friend from grad school, Megin Jimenez, and I have done a number of writing challenges together and that is always really helpful.

DW: I used to have endless time to write things. Now I have a family and a job and several projects, so I tend to write shorter things in sustained bursts.

5. Describe your writing style in one sentence.

LC: I’ll say something about Dave’s writing. His style is precise and nuanced with a deep well of feeling running beneath. He’s also a really brilliant editor and manages multiple creative projects at once which is inspiring to see in action.

DW: What I love about Laura’s writing is that she’s able to explore the ways that the political and the personal intersect. I particularly admire how she can write emotionally without being sentimental, politically without being didactic, personally without being confessional.

Five Questions, by Nicole L. Drayton. Nicole is a writer, screenwriter and independent filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Liberal Arts from The New School, and currently works for the university in the MFA in Creative Writing Program office.
Five Questions With Basil Soper
By Nicole Drayton / in People, Riggio Honors, TNS Lit Scene, Undergraduate / May 14, 2019

Basil is a southern man of transgender experience, writer, photographer, and the Executive Director of Transilient. He’s an astrology enthusiast and he grew up in rural South Carolina and was homeless queer youth at the age of 16. He cites his childhood as being a large motivator in his work. He’s been published numerous times with various outlets such as Harper’s Bazar, OUT, Buzzfeed, Refinery 29, and more. He got a BA in Creative Writing from the New School.

To learn more about Basil visit: www.basilvaughnsoper.com

1.   Who is your favorite villain, and who is your favorite protagonist in literature?

People might not think that this villain is a villain at all, but I do. I believe David from Giovanni's Room could be considered a villain. David is filled with self-deception that allows him to hurt others. He doesn't recognize or accept his sexuality or even white privilege. David lives a life that he feels is based in choice because he believes that the creation of identity is a matter of decision rather than acceptance. In many ways, David's character is a reflection of white supremacist patriarchy and colonization as he goes to Europe and enters communities which he takes from rather than helps build up. David is a metaphor for how harmful a lack of self-acceptance can be. You become your worst enemy while hurting others too when you can’t look at yourself.

My favorite protagonist is the narrator in Miranda July’s short story “The Swim Team”. She’s so discerning and strange. There's not one person who I've asked to read that story and didn't absolutely love it.

2.   When did you know you were a writer?

I knew I was a writer as soon as I could write. I started journaling at age 5 and also began writing up mock radio shows and plays that I’d record on a boom box around age 6 or 7.

3.   What are you currently working on?

I’m working on my chapbook, “equanimity”. I’ve been submitting pieces from it and hope to submit it next Fall as a fully formed book of poems. Aside from that, I am always working on myself and creatively I am trying to bringing more of my sense of humor to my work.

4. How has your writing process changed over the years?

My writing has changed as I have changed. The more vulnerable and honest I can be with myself the better my writing is. As I have gotten older, I have gotten braver and I think a reader can hear that in my work. I used to not be able to write about certain things either: my father is a big example of that. I also believe I found true love for the first time in my life because my current partner is the first person who I am able to write love poems about. Ones that don’t feel contrived and are filled with joy. So, that’s really nice.

5. Describe your writing style in one sentence.

Vulnerability fueled by an ever-shifting array of insightfulness.

Five Questions, by Nicole L. Drayton. Nicole is a writer, screenwriter and independent filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Liberal Arts from The New School, and currently works for the university in the MFA in Creative Writing Program office.
Five Questions with Cheree Stevenson
By Nicole Drayton / in Current Students, Fiction, MFA, People, TNS Lit Scene, Writing for Children and Young Adults / May 9, 2019

My name is Cheree', I am second year Writing for Children and Young Adults MFA student in my thesis semester! I have an undergraduate degree in history education and I write speculative fiction incorporating my love for social justice, historical context, and fantastical realms.

1. Who is your favorite villain, and who is your favorite protagonist in literature?

My favorite villain is Silas from the Da Vinci Code. In many ways, he's an overzealous psychopath that does some horrible things in the book, but he's also a fully developed person who doesn't think of himself as a bad guy. He genuinely believes he is doing what is right which makes his actions sympathetic yet more sinister.

My favorite protagonist is Charlie from The Perks of Being a Wallflower. In the same vein, Charlie doesn't realize the impact he has on others, although his actions are majorly positive and pure.

2. When did you know you were a writer?

I knew I was a writer in third grade, I wrote a lot of stories and plays but kept them private. It wasn't until the end of eighth grade that I realized writing is something I could actually do in a public sphere. Which brings us to the oh so healthy emo writing phase that I just had to share with everyone willing to listen.

3. What are you currently working on?

I'm currently working on a young adult speculative fiction novel about Eugenics, arranged marriages, and disobeying social norms.

4 How has your writing process changed over the years?

I feel much more gutsy with my work now than I have in the past. I was always worried about how my work would impact others and how they see me. Now I write whatever is in my scary head and worry about the audience secondarily.

5. Describe your writing style in one sentence.

I am a pantser all the way. I plan very little. Typically when I'm working on a new piece I have a tone for the end of the book and I pants my way until I get there, usually stream of consciousness style that I have to overcorrect while editing.

Five Questions, by Nicole L. Drayton. Nicole is a writer, screenwriter and independent filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Liberal Arts from The New School, and currently works for the university in the MFA in Creative Writing Program office.
Five Questions With Medina
By Nicole Drayton / in Fiction, MFA, People, TNS Lit Scene / May 7, 2019

Medina is a nonbinary queer Latinx writer (they/them/their). They are a first-year MFA Creative writing student concentrating in Writing for Children and Young Adults. They are the 2019 winner of SCBWI’s Emerging Voices Award. They are also an Impact Entrepreneur Fellow through TNS. Through their fellowship their venture is to create a platform for LGBTQIA+ youth of color (inqluded.org)

1. Who is your favorite villain, and who is your favorite protagonist in literature?

I struggle with this question because I feel like I had to borrow characteristics from multiple protagonists to see myself in books. To me, the ultimate protagonist is someone who resonates with me on a personal level.That said, I don’t have a perfect answer to this question, but I adore Matilda for her thirst of knowledge, awareness, resilient spirit and strong sense of justice.

The boy in The Giving Tree is a narcissistic little mess, isn’t he? The Giving Tree has always been one of my favorite books. As I grow up, my reasons for loving the book evolves.

I think we can learn from both.

2. When did you know you were a writer?

English is not my first language so when I started to learn English I found words to be extremely fascinating. I started off as an avid reader and then discovered I could do the writing thing people do in books, too!

I was also very obsessed with writing TV scripts and making homemade movies. I starred, wrote, and directed it. I convinced my friend that being an audience member was just as important. She stopped coming over.

Joking, kind of.

I also remember in second grade we had to write a short story. Most everyone had written a page, meanwhile, I had written 22 pages. I mean, towards the end I think my words were size 20 in font because I was competing with someone else in my class to write the most. But I didn't want to stop. I was living!

I don’t know if there was a moment where I knew I was a writer.

I am always in the process of writing.

Writing is part of my life.

I am writing.

“Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.
This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse.” - Rainer Maria Rilke

3. What are you currently working on?

My queer contemporary middle-grade novel is currently undergoing surgery. I am also working on a PB, a MG in verse and a YA novel. I am also the Editor-in-chief of LGBTQIA+ lit mag for youth of color!

4. How has your writing process changed over the years?

I think that over the years, as I start to write with more direction (the goal to be published), I’ve become more intentional with setting aside time to write. I typically write every day for one hour (at least) and set goals and deadlines for myself. When I’m sitting at my desk writing, I have different playlists I use to evoke a certain mood or to mirror a current emotion and write from the core of that. Sometimes I listen to the same song on repeat for hours. Does anyone else do that?

There are also moments when I wake up at 2 am because I have just dreamed of the perfect scene, so I open up my notes on my phone and sleepily type it in. By 2 pm, I realize it’s not the perfect scene, but there’s still something there that I feel compelled to continue writing.

But with all that said, I also write for myself and that always reminds me that I don’t have to have direction or a goal. I can write for myself and that is enough.

5. Describe your writing style in one sentence.

Do you feel the same way, too?

Five Questions, by Nicole Loy. Nicole is a writer, screenwriter and independent filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Liberal Arts from The New School, is the Food News Editor of The Inquisitive Eater, and currently works for the university in the MFA in Creative Writing Program office.
Five Questions With Christopher X. Shade
By Nicole Drayton / in Fiction, Graduates, People, TNS Lit Scene / May 1, 2019

The writer Christopher X. Shade (USA), New York, New York, May 25, 2018. Photograph by Beowulf Sheehan.

Christopher X. Shade is author of the novel The Good Mother of Marseille (Paloma Press, 2019). He is co-founder and co-editor of Cagibi, at cagibilit.com, a journal of poetry and prose. His stories and book reviews have appeared widely, and he has won story awards including the 2016 Writers at Work fellowship competition. He teaches fiction and poetry writing at The Writers Studio. Raised in the South, he now lives with his wife in New York City. His website is christopherxshade.com.

1. Who is your favorite villain, and who is your favorite protagonist in literature?

Villain: The plague sweeping Oran in Camus’s The Plague! And Boo Radley in Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird.

Protagonist: The disenchanted cop Fabio Montale in Total Chaos, the celebrated neo-noir novel set in Marseille—a book that was one of many influences from literature for my novel The Good Mother of Marseille. And Tom Wingo in Pat Conroy’s The Prince Of Tides, and Binx Bolling in The Moviegoer.

2. When did you know you were a writer?

I was writing at a very young age, and can’t pin down a definitive moment. I feel incredibly fortunate to have always known that I would write. Very few people, it seems to me, come up in life with a clear and urgent understanding of what they can do with all that they feel strongly about. So I’ve always been a writer. And there were other modes of artistic expression, like painting. I’ve done a lot of painting — but there were moments in my life when I felt compelled to choose to do less of other things like painting in order to devote more of me to writing, because to do the work of writing well requires tremendous perseverance. This word perseverance, from the Latin, meaning “to abide strictly,” of course means to persist and to sustain and to maintain focus, but it also means to do less of other things, to sever distractions.

3. What are you currently working on?

A new novel that reaches back into a family’s Civil Rights-era past. In this story, a man returns to the small Alabama town of his childhood to visit an older family friend, who is in hospice with cancer. Like The Good Mother of Marseille, it is a story about coming to understand each other.

Also, a book of poems I’ve been writing during a series of visits to a monastery, to come to terms with the loss of someone in my life.

4 How has your writing process changed over the years?

I trust my instincts more; I doubt less. I give myself more permission to experiment. I still write mostly by hand, with a pencil on unlined paper.

5. Describe your writing style in one sentence.

Philip Schultz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and founder of the Writers Studio, said of my novel, “Shade’s sensitivity toward his characters is infectious, and, quite frankly, unforgettable.” I opened here with The Plague by Camus, so I'll go with the one-word sentence: "Infectious."

Five Questions, by Nicole L. Drayton. Nicole is a writer, screenwriter and independent filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Liberal Arts from The New School, and currently works for the university in the MFA in Creative Writing Program office.
Five Questions with Rocky Halpern
By Nicole Drayton / in TNS Lit Scene / April 24, 2019

"Rocky Halpern is a writer, sex educator, lifelong nomad, and second year MFA creative writing candidate with a concentration in nonfiction. He is the 2019 recipient of the Bette Howland Nonfiction Award, and currently working on a memoir about his experience coming to terms with being a gay, transgender man during a time in his life where in which he feared being a man was synonymous with being a monster. He is a lifelong theatre nerd, lover of trashy celebrity memoirs, and the color pink."

1. Who is your favorite villain, and who is your favorite protagonist in literature?

My favorite villain would have to be the talented Mr. Tom Ripley. I guess I'm a sucker for a brooding anti-hero dripping in gay subtext and the blood of his perceived enemies.

My favorite protagonist is Alison Bechdel's unflinching and earnest characterization of her childhood/younger self in Fun Home and Are You My Mother? Bechdel was the first memoirist who helped me understand how impactful the truth could be, and that sometimes you've got to be your own hero.

2. When did you know you were a writer?

I knew I was a writer when I was trying to do anything besides write, but still found myself surrounded by little scraps of ideas I was too insecure to follow through with. I realized I owed it to myself to try, because the itch wasn't going away.

3. What are you currently working on?

Right now I'm working on my memoir, which is centered around three generations of men in my family and my experience coming to terms with being transgender. I have also been working on a young adult novel about a trans gay boy who loves musical theatre. I spent my entire tween and teen years searching for every single book about LGBT kids, and there just weren't that many. And there were like none about trans kids, which is probably why it took me well into adulthood to discover that about myself. I think if I had even read one book about a boy like me, it would have changed everything. So, I want to write the book that would have saved me as a kid.

4. How has your writing process changed over the years?

When I was 13, I would write these terrible, angsty poems about drowning in blood and eating dead flowers. My mother found them and I was promptly sent to therapy. I kept writing bad poetry about dying, but would immediately tear up the poems afterwards so no one could ever find them. So, I guess my subject matter has improved, and I don't immediately throw my writing into the trash anymore (though I am still tempted to do so at times).

5. Describe your writing style in one sentence.

“All of us invent ourselves. Some of us just have more imagination than others" -Cher

Five Questions, by Nicole L. Drayton. Nicole is a writer, screenwriter and independent filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Liberal Arts from The New School, and currently works for the university in the MFA in Creative Writing Program office.