"Where Have You Been?" A Year-Plus Literary Life Recap
It’s been a long time, friends. More than a year, specifically. Here’s a one-year rundown, accompanied by links to some much-needed website updates.
After I got the first year of my MFA program down, in December 2018, I leaned fully into the Wisconsin winter and its built-in creative writing residency experience, i.e. lots of cold, snow, and minimal social interaction. The end of 2018 required a sobering look at the immigration crisis. Valeria Luiselli’s essential Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions illuminated the United States’ complicity in the drug crisis and gang violence afflicting so many families south of the U.S. border. I wrote about Luiselli’s Tell Me How It Ends in a hybrid review/essay for Lunch Ticket in late 2018.
The polar vortex in late January/early February of 2019 was a brutal one, and we left our kitchen and bathroom sinks on just slightly for three days, the drip-drip-drip of the water serving as a sort of existential waterboarding torture, reminding me I couldn’t leave the house for fear of frostbite in all my extremities.
In February 2019, about exactly a year ago, I had the honor of interviewing Luiselli herself for The Rumpus, on her latest novel, Lost Children Archive. Our interview coincided with a snowstorm that dumped 24 inches on our region. At one point early in the interview, Luiselli asked if I could adjust the microphone, since there was a lot of background noise. I moved into a different, quieter room after explaining it was the wind howling through the minuscule openings in the storm windows.
I served as the Blog Editor and Content Manager for Lunch Ticket from December 2018 through June 2019, and the experience was a thorough education in how to best manage an online literary journal, as well as keep it updated with fresh weekly content. I developmentally, line, and copy-edited all the personal essays for the blog. And, I contributed some personal essays, on feminism, interior decorating, and Virginia Woolf, and on how I lived without reliable Internet in our rural home for two-and-a-half years. Most of all, I worked with an admirable team of strong women who I miss a lot.
In March, after nearly ten years of being together, my husband and I finally adopted a pet—a puppy we named Val. She is a source of immense amusement, unconditional love, and the best snuggles. We adore her. Of course, having an eight-week-old puppy put some dents in my writing schedule and made sleep nightmarish for awhile. However, I’m so glad we got her when we did. My mostly at-home work schedule made house training her as easy as it could be, and we were able to focus on her needs, health, and behaviors right away, at all times. Now, she’s a year old and while she’s still terrible at walking on a leash in our neighborhood (loves to jump up and chew on the leash, shaking it like a toy), she’s the happiest, sweetest, most well-behaved dog inside, outside in not-our-neighborhood places, and around new people. She doesn’t jump up anymore on strangers she wants to meet, and she’s such a delight around other dogs. Her off-leash hiking skills and attention to where we are at all times are impressive. Val is sleeping on top of my feet right now as I type this, reminding me why dogs are the best.
In late March and early April, I attended AWP in Portland, Oregon, which was a blast. I wish I would have gone more prepared for certain panels, but I ended up seeing a lot of writers I wanted to see read, meeting some excellent acquaintances, and most important, building solid and lasting friendships with other writers and people I admire. I’ll be there again this year, in San Antonio.
Later that spring, I kept considering how literature affects our everyday decisions and channeled that energy into one of the rawest, most revealing personal essays I’ve ever written. I was overjoyed to have it accepted by Electric Literature and published in April 2019. This was a tough essay to write and an even scarier one to share with the general public—a written admission of my past party-girl habits and penchant for uppers. It’s all out there now, though, and I still think it’s the best deep-dive literary-annotation-turned-personal-essay that I’ve written. How humbling and stunning it was to be in the company of so many great writers’ work on Electric Literature. A dream journal of mine for sure.
May 2019 was one of the busiest and most humbling months I’ve ever lived through. I organized a Literary Uprising in Columbus, Ohio, a satellite reading to represent Antioch writers in the Midwest. I’m proud to say that this reading series has taken off now, with numerous other Antioch students and alumni hosting satellite readings of their own, graciously supported by Literary Uprising grants supplied by my now-alma mater.
I also found out in April that I won an honorable mention, second place, award for my critical paper through the Antioch University library’s Research Paper Awards. The award meant a lot to me, since I spent the harsh winter working hard on the paper, which is about the demise of the middle class and the changed depictions of feminism in domestic fiction post-Great Recession. In May, I gave a quick presentation via video chat to accept my award from a meeting room in the Fond du Lac Public Library, phoning into the Antioch Los Angeles library. It was a great way to end a truly challenging and transformative semester, during which I had worked with the eminent and magical Francesca Lia Block, a writer I’ve admired since I first read Weetzie Bat at the probably-too-young age of eight.
At my fourth of five MFA residences in LA in June, I got to introduce the nonfiction writer and journalist Chris Feliciano Arnold. It was a busy summer after, too, including a reading with Madison Writers’ Studio in July at Johnson Public House in Madison. I took classes with the terrific Michelle Wildgen through Madison Writers’ Studio before embarking on my MFA, and she is still one of the best editors I’ve met, a stalwart resource for writing and editing, and a genuinely great and supportive person. Reading as a Madison Writers’ Studio alum was an honor, and showed me just how far the novel I’m writing has come since I first worked on it with Michelle.
The next Literary Uprising Midwest was held in Chicago in August, organized by some dear poet friends, Maya Nordine and Jeri Frederickson. I was able to read a small portion of my novel there and continue to revise its rough edges. I began working with Alistair McCartney as my final-semester mentor in June, and his feedback was immensely helpful—I’m still sifting through some of it as I attempt to hand off my novel manuscript by March 10 to a professor who teaches a college-level developmental novel editing class. (Eek—deadlines!)
I was able to make contact with three agents this past fall, and their interest in my work was enough to justify a four-day trip to New York in September. No news yet, but I’ll keep all interested parties posted…
As usual, after all this effort and some significant burnout, I fell into my typical seasonal depression in September and October, unable to work much or even read. All I wanted to do was cuddle with our dear Val, sleep 12 hours a night, and eat carbohydrates. I felt cut off and isolated from my MFA program in LA, and I deeply feared I would not graduate after working my tail off for nearly two years. These recurrent seasonal affective depressive episodes nearly have derailed my career plans and life in the past. One of my major resolutions for 2020 is to find a reliable, trustworthy, excellent therapist who will help me push through the darkness, whether that requires talk therapy or medication or a combination of both.
In mid-October, with the support of my program, I roused myself out of the funk and worked extremely hard to finish my final manuscript, annotations, and the UW-Milwaukee PhD in creative writing application. After successful first and second semesters in the Antioch MFA program, I decided I would like to pursue a PhD in creative writing, and I focused almost all my efforts in the MFA program toward that end-goal. The critical paper I wrote kept me busy and distracted from some horrifying world events and personal tragedies in Winter 2019, but it also served as a catalyst for growth in my research interests. I’m so excited to report that I got into the PhD in Creative Writing program at UW-Milwaukee, beginning Fall 2020, where I likely will continue my critical analysis and research on neodomestic fiction, feminism, capitalism, and the so-called American Dream. I’m delighted to be a part of UWM’s stellar program and to spend more time in my hometown, Milwaukee.
In November, I hosted a Literary Uprising reading in Milwaukee itself, featuring Jennifer Morales, an Antioch MFA alum, as our featured reader. The event was in a neat old firehouse renovated into a restaurant, Engine Company Number Three, in the Walker’s Point neighborhood of Milwaukee. As always, it was wonderful to catch up with my AULA MFA peers and hear their enlivening work.
Another factor spurring me to the MFA graduation finish line was that Victoria Chang, Antioch’s MFA program chair, prompted interested members of our cohort to draft a three-minute commencement speech if we wanted to be considered as the graduating student commencement speaker. When I wrote my speech submission, I wrote it from a realistic place—sometimes dark, sometimes sunny and optimistic. The emotions I felt and the intellectual rigor I leaned into in the MFA program all went into this speech submission. In mid-November, I found out my speech was chosen! I was going to be the graduating commencement speaker. Now, I HAD to graduate. Haha!
The last-minute mad dashes of work paid off, and I attended my fifth and final MFA graduation in December to graduate. The pressure was on from the first evening of residency, when I gave my graduating 15-minute reading, sharing a stage with creative nonfiction writer Mary Beth Bonfiglio, poet-performer extraordinaire Barbara Fant, and revered writer and Antioch guest faculty Alexander Chee.
The fifth and final MFA residency was a marathon in hyperventilation-inducing public speaking, nerve wracking final manuscript edits and submission, and real-time revisions for my assigned workshop with Jim Krusoe. I introduced the intelligent and funny young adult writer Aminah Mae Safi in the middle of residency, and my cousin Annie was able to come to LA for a surprise visit to see my introduction and Safi’s reading. What kismet.
On Sunday, December 15, I attended convocation and gave my student commencement speech, nearly—but not ACTUALLY—crying about 37 times because I was so nervous and moved to be a part of that pack of writers and peers. What a fruitful, challenging whirlwind of a journey this has been, this MFA life. The most gratifying part of commencement was the presence of my mom, Aunt Becky, little sister Sammie, her mom Tabbie, and her aunt Mindy. Simon also came from Wisconsin, of course.
As a reward for our tenacity, Simon and I went on vacation in Jackson Hole, Wyoming for six days, leaving from LAX the morning after graduation. We spent our time staying warm in the hot tub, eating fantastic food, taking daytime hikes, visiting Yellowstone, cross-country skiing too many miles, and again, eating more great food. Wyoming whiskey, by the way, cannot be beat.
I’ve been back home in rural Fond du Lac County for almost two months now, and I’ve focused on reading poetry and fiction, translating a huge fiction project, and working on—surprise, surprise—some visual art. I often become hyper-focused on one major project at a time. Some would call this having an obsessive personality, which I’m okay with saying about my work ethic and tendencies. However, these obsessions don’t leave much room for multidisciplinary exploration and learning. So, I decided after I finished my MFA that I would give writing short fiction a break for a bit and focus on translating a novel from Italian.
I’ve slowly been translating a slim novel by Muzi Epifani, published in 1982, from the original Italian for about a year now. I started translating in earnest after taking a required 10-week translation course during my MFA at Antioch LA with Piotr Florczyk. The art of translation became an intense interest, and I sought work to translate that is in line with my values and writing style. Having studied Italian in undergrad at UW-Madison, I came across Epifani’s work back in 2005, and it stuck with me. Her feminist themes, sparkling wit, and vibrant storytelling are a delight to read and translate. I’m looking forward to generating more translations and sharing more of Epifani’s words with the English reading world. Earlier this month, I received the news that I was accepted into the Kenyon Review Translation Workshop for Summer 2020, a thrilling honor and huge motivator to continue working in literary translation.
Painting, drawing, and pastel work are media in which I can still be expressive but that give me a break from the swirling, chaotic environment of words in my mind. I’m grateful to the THELMA Sadoff Center for the Arts in Fond du Lac for having excellent art courses for adult artists and learners.
Of course, as I mentioned, I’m also still making extensive revisions to my novel. I’m excited to work with a university class in March and April 2020 to make this draft of the novel the strongest it can be before I query agents again in April, May, and June.
Now, I’d like to get the blog back on some sort of regular schedule, probably twice a month. In the meantime, some questions:
What do you all want to read about?
Will my run-down of AWP and literary happenings be helpful and engaging, like I aim to make them?
Would any of you attend a reading in Minneapolis in May if I organized one…?
Is anyone going to a summer workshop or conference they’re excited about?
If not, what do you think the literary community and publishing industry can do to make these workshops and conferences more accessible for those who are not able to take the time off to attend them?
Until early March,
Erica