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Justin Danzy

Winner of the 2021 NER Award for Emerging Writers

March 19, 2021

Justin Danzy

New England Review and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference are delighted to announce the selection of Justin Danzy as the recipient of the seventh annual New England Review Award for Emerging Writers. He was chosen among a strong pool of emerging writers published in NER in 2020, including the six finalists.

Justin Danzy‘s poem “Cow Bones” appeared in NER 41.3. Other work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Offing, On the Seawall, Obsidian, New Ohio Review, Guesthouse, and elsewhere. He was the 2019 Gregory Pardlo Fellow at the Frost Place and received an Academy of American Poets Prize from Washington University in St. Louis, where he completed his MFA and currently serves as the Senior Fellow in Poetry. He is originally from Southfield, Michigan.

Justin will receive a full scholarship to the Bread Loaf Workshop Series in August 2021, as the Stephen Donadio Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Scholar. Congratulations to Justin!

Filed Under: Featured, News & Notes Tagged With: Justin Danzy

NER Interns: Where are they now?

Jenn Shapland

March 18, 2021

NER winter intern Regina Fontanelli ’22 talks to Jenn Shapland ’08, former NER intern and current archivist and writer of My Autobiography of Carson McCullers about writing, inspiration, and her process along the way.

Jenn Shapland during her time at Middlebury College (left) and now (right).

Regina Fontanelli: Tell us briefly, where are you now, both geographically and professionally, and what were some of the steps in between?

Jenn Shapland: I am in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I spend half my time writing and the other half working as an archivist for a visual artist. I moved here with my partner, Chelsea Weathers, in 2016 from Austin, Texas, after working at an independent bookstore called BookPeople and ending up in graduate school, getting a PhD in English at the University of Texas. While at UT I worked as an intern at the Harry Ransom Center, where I developed an interest in archives, personal effects, and Carson McCullers. I wrote my first longform essay about that job, its intimacies and peculiarities, and a series of thefts from the archives, in a piece called “Finders, Keepers” that was published in Tin House and went on to win a Pushcart Prize. Writing that essay helped me realize that I didn’t want to be an academic, but a writer.

RF: I’ve read some of your interviews about your process writing My Autobiography of Carson McCullers and it seems like it was a really personal one for you. How did you feel when the book was finally being published last year?

JS: I felt a million ways. Elated, because I had written and published my first book. I was a real writer! Exposed and vulnerable, because the writing dealt not just with Carson McCullers and her queer life, but with my own life as a queer woman, my awkward coming out narrative, and my chronic illness. Exhausted, because it took so long to finish the book, including about six months dealing with the McCullers estate’s refusal of permissions, leading to a long process of redacting and paraphrasing quotations. And nervous about my book tour, thirteen cities in three weeks, which I was very lucky to be able to squeeze in during February 2020, before the country locked down.

RF: I think a lot of writers can feel fear when it comes to breaking tradition. Were there any works that influenced or inspired you to blend memoir and biography the way you do in your book?

JS: A number of books do this, but the ones I read going into this project were: Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde, which calls itself a biomythography; Suite for Barbara Loden by Nathalie Leger; Camus: A Romance by Elizabeth Hawes; Edie by Jean Stein; and Janet Malcolm’s The Silent Woman.

RF: I’ve noticed you’ve published a number of essays, and that you have one forthcoming in NER next fall. Where do you draw your inspiration—and do you have any favorite pieces?

JS: I draw the most inspiration from reading as much and as widely as I can, and then from living my life. Writing is a way to be in never-ending conversation with voices across time and space, a truth I’ve cherished over the last year at home in an isolated place. Right now I’m working on an essay collection, but it might morph into a more experimental longform work, instead of essays. I’m still figuring it out. So the nonfiction I love, lately and always, also tends to hover at the borders of the genre: Claudia Rankine’s Just Us; Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings; Valeria Luiselli’s Forty Questions; Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts; Mary Ruefle’s My Private Property; Jo Ann Beard’s The Boys of My Youth; Zadie Smith’s Feel Free; Darcy Steinke’s Menopause; Eula Biss’s Having and Being Had; Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House.

RF: Do you feel like going to Middlebury has contributed to who you are as a writer?

JS: Certainly, and in unexpected ways. Most recently I realized that I drew on some of my knowledge of translation theory and an Italian short story I translated with Professor Monica Pavani while studying in Ferrara, Italy, when I was paraphrasing quotes from Carson McCullers for my book. It was a very similar, deep kind of listening, parsing each word for subtext, cadence, rhythm, sound, to try to recreate someone’s voice in my own words. My reading practice is profoundly influenced by the reading I did at Middlebury for the Literary Studies major with Professor Stephen Donadio and Ben Ehrlich. And I’m sure I draw on things I learned from reading the slush pile for NER as an intern once upon a time! I credit my ability to write a dissertation with the thesis I wrote for Professor Pavlos Sfyroeras, a Middlebury gem. The essays I’m working on now, like my dissertation on wastescapes, “Narrative Salvage,” engage with environmental damage and toxicity, and when I got to Middlebury I wanted to be an environmental science major. A semester studying corn root worms cured me of the science ambitions, but I credit Middlebury with raising my awareness and interest in climate change and more hidden environmental issues, which drives my writing today.

RF: Thank you so much, Jenn, for your sharing time, recommendations, and experience with us.

Filed Under: Featured, Interns, News & Notes, Where Are They Now Tagged With: Jenn Shapland, Regina Fontanelli

The Counterforce by J. M. Tyree

A New Book from NER’s Nonfiction Editor

March 16, 2021

We are thrilled to announce the release today of a new book The Counterforce by NER‘s Nonfiction editor—J. M. Tyree—just published by Fiction Advocate. Congratulations, Josh!

From the publisher: The Counterforce is “a lucid guide” to Thomas Pynchon’s detective novel, Inherent Vice. Each chapter of The Counterforce is arranged after something Pynchon stands against: Los Angeles, Celebrity, Real Estate, Smiling, Reality, Sobriety, Sanity, Werewolves, etc.

“J.M. Tyree’s The Counterforce, unlike so much literary scholarship, is brilliant and hilarious and stamped with style on every page. This wonderful book is a skeleton key for unlocking both Pynchon’s novels and our own fictional futures.” —Jim Gavin, Creator/Executive Producer, AMC’s Lodge 49

In addition to The Counterforce, J. M. Tyree is the coauthor of Our Secret Life in the Movies (with Michael McGriff), an NPR’s Best Book Selection, and of BFI Film Classics: The Big Lebowski (with Ben Walters), from the British Film Institute.

Read an excerpt—”Against Sobriety”—on our site here.

The Counterforce can be purchased from Fiction Advocate or from your local bookstore.

Filed Under: Featured, News & Notes Tagged With: Fiction Advocate, J.M. Tyree

NER Interns: Where are they now?

Dustin Lowman

March 11, 2021

NER winter intern Will Koch ’21 talks with former NER intern Dustin Lowman ’15 about writing music, copywriting, and reflecting on New England Review.

Will Koch: Where are you now—geographically and professionally?

Dustin Lowman: Geographically, I’m in Westport, CT; professionally, I own and operate my own freelance writing business, Guitar & Pen, LLC.

WK: At one point you were pursuing a career as a performing songwriter/musician. Do you find that there is any overlap between songwriting and creative or journalistic writing? What components of these processes, if any, are similar?

DL: What a great question. There certainly are overlaps—the biggest one being that at the outset of any writing project, there’s going to be a voice in your head telling you not to do it. It’s a similar voice to the one that discourages you from exercising, getting up early, saving money, etc. The skill I’ve had to develop over time is ignoring this voice, embracing the anxiety that accompanies a blank page, damning the torpedoes, and starting.

I’ll add that, in each type of writing, people think that the writing process will have you starting at the beginning and ending at the end. That’s almost never true. First paragraphs end up as final paragraphs; verses end up as choruses; beautiful phrases end up on the cutting room floor. Beginnings and ends are the luxury considerations of writers who’ve already written. 

Other than that, the biggest commonality between songwriting, journalism, and other forms of professional writing is rhythm. A collateral benefit of having written songs for a long time is that I’ve developed a strong sense of internal rhythm, which is my guiding principle as I write for the page. Writing is like driving; reading is like being driven. If it’s a smooth ride, with occasional thrills and an underlying sense of safety, it’ll be enjoyable. 

WK: It’s safe to say that your career has been very writing-centric, from your own journalistic pursuits to coaching undergraduate students on their writing. To you, what constitutes “good” writing? How does your experience as a writing coach influence your writing?

DL: Interesting. It’s hard to make rules about “good” writing because any style of writing can be “good” if carried out effectively. It’s a true, though not exciting, answer to say that I know good writing when I see it. But on a more personal level, my favorite kind of writing is that which 1) Cares about the reader and doesn’t treat them like an adversary; 2) Challenges the reader and doesn’t coddle them; and 3) Is completely unique and can’t be done by any other writer.

As for coaching, I’d say that telling other writers what does and doesn’t work makes me get very detailed about the things that tend to work/not work in writing. It’s easy to rely on my intuition when judging writing/creating my own, but articulating the products of my intuition is much harder, and much more rewarding when it’s my turn to create something.

WK: What was your most memorable experience with NER? Are there any pieces or moments that you remember particularly well?

DL: There were a handful of times that I talked with Carolyn and/or Marcy in the office about writing, often toward the end of the day, when we were both a little fried and able to be candid. It was immensely rewarding to have those frank exchanges with people who’d spent their lives in and around writing. I also remember evaluating writing submissions with a combination of fondness and dread—like my answer to #3, that was an early lesson in articulating the facets of effective—and more often, ineffective—writing.

WK: How much creative writing do you find yourself doing these days? How does it compare to writing you find yourself doing as a freelance copywriter?

DL: I do much less creative writing now than I used to, but it’s still a very central component of my life, and integral to my happiness. Lately, I’ve been much more focused on getting my business off the ground, establishing relationships with clients, setting income goals, and all in all, figuring out the specifics of making writing the engine of my life.

My private creative writing and public freelance writing are unalike for one main reason: Creative writing is artistry, freelance writing is craftsmanship. Of course, there is art in craftsmanship, and craft is indelible to artistry, but the pie charts (if you will) are inverses. The yin-yang symbol is actually a perfect way to visualize this. When my life is good, and my soul is happy, my days are made up of these equal but opposite halves.

WK: What do you read for pleasure? Have you read anything good lately?

DL: I read mostly novels for pleasure. Most recently, I read Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie, which I found to be both bursting with wisdom and oddly superficial when it came to its characters. Before that, I read Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon, who is among the most skilled writers of the last century, and whose narrative engine—paranoia—is less cool today than when Gravity’s Rainbow came out. The most impactful book I read in the past year was Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. Despite its very underwhelming last 30 pages, it was a heartbreakingly well-rendered novel about divorce in the city.

WK: Thanks for taking the time to update us, Dustin! Best of luck as you continue with Guitar & Pen and any other pursuits!

Filed Under: Featured, Interns, News & Notes, Where Are They Now Tagged With: Dustin Lowman, Will Koch

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Serhiy Zhadan

“That’s the appeal of writing: you treat the world like a potential text, using it as material, setting yourself apart, stepping out.”

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