New England Review

NER Interns: Where are they now?

Catherine Ahearn

Image: Catherine Ahearn

Catherine Ahearn ’11 talks to NER intern Brett Sorbo ’24 about living in Boston, exploring special collections libraries, and trusting her gut.

Brett Sorbo: Where are you now, geographically and professionally?

Catherine Ahearn: Currently I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I moved to Boston for grad school in September 2011 and have been here ever since! I work as the head of communities and am a co-founder of the nonprofit called Knowledge Futures. We’re a distributed team with staff all over the world, but I work from home.

BS: You received a PhD in Editorial Studies in 2017. Could you tell us a little about that field and what motivated you to pursue it after Middlebury?

CA: I had no idea what Editorial Studies was when I was investigating graduate school programs and even just grad school generally as a potential next step for me. My advisor, Professor Stephen Donadio, called me one day in the summer of 2011 and suggested I look into the program. His hunch was spot-on! I had been turned off by how theoretical many of the English PhD programs I was looking at seemed to be and I really wanted something more practical, helpful, and hands-on. The Editorial Institute at Boston University was co-founded by poet Geoffrey Hill and literary critic and scholar, Christopher Ricks. It focuses more on applied methodologies for more effectively communicating and recontextualizing information. This can mean anything from considering the merits, gains, and losses of a digital versus a print edition of a body of work to smaller questions about how you indicate notes within a text. I worked on a project that immersed me in archives and special collections libraries in the United States and Europe to track down information and make the columns of Irish author Brian O’Nolan more knowable and accessible. I loved that there was something groundingly practical about it while each annotation I wrote took me on a little rabbit hole where I got to learn new things and track down new information.

BS: You went to Boston University for your PhD and are currently working at MIT in Cambridge. What do you enjoy about being in the Metro Boston area?

CA: The community of people my husband and I have here is the best part. We both went to grad school here, so most of our friends are college friends (Middlebury and WashU) and friends from MIT. Cambridge feels like a little town in many ways and I try to lean into that as much as possible. I love our familiarity with local business owners and the fact that we see the same people at the dog park every morning. All the while we also have the perks of being in a big US city (and rarely need to use our car). 

BS: What sage advice would you offer to Middlebury students? Is there anything that you wish you had done in your undergraduate years?

CA: Oh gosh. I have no sage advice! I think the best thing you can do is trust your own process. Mine was so circuitous, and I often felt that I had no idea what I was doing or where my choices were leading me. Sometimes this is still the case. But in retrospect I see that I often let my passions and strengths guide me, even if steps didn’t always make logical sense. When I look back on my time at Middlebury I’m just extremely grateful for those years. If anything, I wish I had spent more time there, maybe worked on campus or in Vermont for a summer; did one less off-campus J-term internship. But I do find comfort in knowing that even while I was a student I was aware of how lucky I was. 

Catherine Ahearn during her time as a Middlebury student

BS: Tell us something that you especially remember from your internship at NER. It could be a story, something you read, or even a lasting impression.

CA: I remember that one of my jobs at NER was to read through and sort the incoming submissions. I imagine most of these come electronically these days, but even in 2011 there was surprisingly still a lot of hard mail to open. I read one short story that I didn’t think was very good—but it was written by an established and very successful author. I remember questioning myself. Should I propose it be accepted anyway? After some discussion with Carolyn and others, the piece was rejected for NER. I think about this sometimes not only when I’m tempted to doubt my intuition in a situation, but also when I fail at something (even award-winning authors write bad stories sometimes!).

BS: What are you reading these days in your spare time?

CA: I’ve really taken to audiobooks lately and like to listen to them while I’m walking my dog or doing things around the house. I recently listened to The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai and loved it. The story and the way Makkai implements time as a device has stuck with me. Next on my list is the new George Saunders collection, Liberation Day.

NER Interns: Where are they now?

Jarrett Dury-Agri

Jarrett Dury-Agri in Bicentennial Hall at a recent Middlebury reunion.

Liz Sheedy ‘22.5 speaks with former NER intern Jarrett Dury-Agri ’12 about German literature, the ceramic arts, and the environmental beauty of Vermont.

Liz Sheedy: Where has your profession taken you? Where are you now?

Jarrett Dury-Agri: I am currently in Waterbury, VT, where my career has taken a turn from academia toward nonprofit administration. In retrospect, it has actually been a journey of returns to Vermont. After graduating Middlebury and teaching on a Fulbright Fellowship in Germany, I found myself back in Norwich, VT during my MA in Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College. Even as I pursued a PhD in German at the University of California, Berkeley, I returned to Breadloaf for the Translators’ Conference and then to teach a course on women’s literature during Middlebury’s J-Term. The pandemic inspired me to latch onto this Vermont connection and re-engage my art education experience as executive assistant at The Current, Stowe’s center for contemporary art and education. Although that was a wonderful way to reconnect with ceramics and the children’s art classes that I conducted over many summers, I am incredibly excited to have returned to higher education as assistant to the president at Vermont College of Fine Arts (VCFA).

LS: How has your study of the German language shaped your creative process?

JDA: The German language can seem sharp and regimented, but my study of poetry and philosophy written in it has revealed a furtive elegance full of literary possibility. Rilke’s sonnets and Bachmann’s streams of consciousness come to mind. Because there is so much sense and structure, in spite of word order or the complex concatenations of smaller semantic units, nuance and neologism become possible at every scale. This combination of the logical and the lyrical made it the ideal language in which to explore the intersection of literature and philosophy in my academic career, and I continue to juxtapose sense and sensuality when I translate turn-of-the-century poetry or construct elegant but nonfunctional ceramic vessels.

LS: In addition to writing and translating, what other forms of art do you pursue? 

JDA: I enjoy painting and drawing, but handbuilt ceramics are my specialty and what I have taught to children in a few different schools and settings. When my head is preoccupied with words, concepts, and meanings, it seems all the more important to actually touch natural materials and practice making things in the world. The relationship between form and function that interests me as a scholar is seldom more tangible than in the ceramic arts.

LS: What are some important takeaways from your stint as an NER intern?

JDA: As an intern, perhaps because it coincided with my work on Sweatervest literary magazine, I came to appreciate how much of a team effort publication is. So many people and pieces contribute to the finished product, which has distinct origins in the reading group that interns are privileged to join. As a reader, I learned how quality could be adjudicated collaboratively, in a team conversation that puts aside personal preference, and that even some of the most compelling work could be accepted on condition of revision. I was tasked with dissolving my generosity of interpretation, and asked instead to anatomize my predilections and explain how a piece worked from the inside outward on its own terms; this was wonderful practice for graduate level analysis.

LS: Who are your favorite contemporary German writers?

JDA: My scholarship focuses on the turn of the twentieth century, which may explain why I appreciate contemporary authors who write from the boundaries and edges, who carry forward the complex imagination and pragmatic confrontation of Franz Kafka and Paul Celan. Herta Müller and Yoko Tawada come to mind in this respect, as does Ann Cotten. Perhaps I have a soft spot for writers who work within a framework of translation, but I appreciate literature that challenges the history, limitation, and legibility of the German language.

LS: How do your educational experiences influence or enrich your current position as assistant to the President of VCFA?

JDA: I use my research and writing abilities every day at VCFA, whether to draft detailed analyses or craft compelling and diplomatic outreach. The process of writing essays and a dissertation prepared me to tackle complex projects where the topic or approach is unfamiliar to me, but nevertheless requires critical analysis and creative solutions. My extensive experience as both a student and an instructor helps me to understand the perspective of faculty at the foundation of our institution, as well as the learners we serve. It is exciting to keep these constituencies in mind with every decision that I assist the President and her administration in making. More than anything, I am excited to be part of the vanguard of graduate education, as we make MFA programs more inclusive, accessible, sustainable, and socially responsible. As someone who believes that education is the root of understanding, growth, and change, I am eager to be a part of envisioning what that future looks like in the arts.

LS: What is your current muse? What past muses have inspired you throughout your academic and creative careers?

JDA: Vermont’s beauty is my current muse. I cannot stop myself from hiking, biking, skiing, or otherwise actively exploring the beautiful, wild corners and caring communities of this state. I am glad to find myself here, because even as I travel the world and am inspired by the places (and many German speakers) I find elsewhere, I realize that it is the languid summer nights and the sound of snow sifting through needles, the muddy Green Mountains, and the ephemerally colored trees, that always have me eager to return home.

LS: Thank you for your wonderful insights, Jarrett; I hope you continue to enjoy the world’s beauty and your rewarding, creative career!

NER Interns: Where are they now?

Kaylen Baker

Image: Kaylen Baker

Editorial intern Jordan Kramarsky ’23 talks with former NER intern Kaylen Baker ’12 about the pliability of language, translation as method acting, and the importance of literary community.

Jordan Kramarsky: Where are you now, geographically and professionally?

Kaylen Baker: I live in Paris and work as a translator—by day. By night, I’m working on the manuscript of what I hope will become my first book of stories. I should add (because I know my college self would have wondered how I got here) that my path has been quite meandering. In France alone I’ve worked in several public schools as an English teacher, at a natural wine bar, at an independent French publishing company, and for my own translation micro-business.  

JK: You’ve studied and worked as a translator and a creative writer; how do these disciplines inform each other?

KB: Intricately! I came to translation through creative writing, by taking a creative translation workshop with Susan Bernofsky during my M.F.A. I loved Susan’s idea that anyone who writes can try their hand at translation, so long as they have a rudimentary knowledge of another language and the writing skills to reconstruct the author’s voice in their own language. Creative writing teaches you to be daring. To mimic and borrow and bend. You learn how pliable language is by writing. In those ways, it gives you all the skills you need to disguise yourself as the foreign doppelgänger of another writer. Creative writing informs the last editing round of translation in particular, when you need to unpin the work from the original and see if it stands on its own. In a way, translation is the reverse of writing, and very mathematical—the sum (or story) is already laid out, you just need to reconstruct it through another formula. Translation relies more on rules rather than rhythm and intuition. It has informed my writing by making me more consistent and detail-oriented. Maybe too rigid—I’ve become an inadvertent fan of the oxford comma. But discovering new writing techniques by translating French writers has been rewarding.

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

KB: Mostly fiction, though last year, in the throes of climate despair, I read Being a Human by Charles Foster. It’s an odd, mystic, maybe controversial take on our species’ history. Yet it allowed me to imagine what it was like to live 40,000 years ago as a hunter-gatherer and made me rethink how integral stories and metaphors are to our state of existence. Somehow, it gave me some closure on my fears of impending doom. Otherwise, some splendid reads have included Trust Exercise by Susan Choi, When I Sing, Mountains Dance, by Irene Solà, and Mona by Pola Oloixarac.

JK: What do you love about the translation process? What does your process look like?


Kaylen during her time as a Literary Studies major at Middlebury College.

KB: Well, I admit I don’t love the first draft! It’s stiff and slow-going, almost forensic. My text ends up covered in red markings and highlights and bracketed comments as I look up definitions and synonyms and try out various combinations of words. In the subsequent drafts I start making choices, giving myself the freedom to select what I like, what I believe works. The draft I love comes next, when I use more of the creative writing brain, approaching the text as if it’s my own, and focusing more on how it sounds out loud. I’ve heard at this stage some translators will go into method-acting mode, swiping on lipstick to get in the mind of, say, Clarice Lispector . . .

JK: When were you an intern at NER, and what do you remember about it? Did your experience influence your current field? 

KB: I have some nice memories from reading submissions. There’s something really tender about that experience, being the first set of eyes on a stranger’s story. I remember microwaving mugs of water for tea, and trying to understand how my co-interns were already so worldly and eloquent! I think it’s important for anyone interested in literature to be around people who work in it and care for it with a fierce passion. Finding people who protect a space where fictive worlds can thrive becomes more rare after college, so knowing back then that this space can exist and matters to others was very influential.

JK: Any advice for readers looking to pursue creative writing professionally?

KB: Read, read, read! And write. As much as possible—that’s when it becomes easier to jump back inside the story/book/manuscript without needing to mentally resurrect all the scaffolding. Don’t be afraid of rejection. Notice what’s working and which ideas get you into a groove. Have some friends who write. None of this is particularly related to the professional world of writing, I suppose. But I think it remains true for even the most established writers. At every stage, the writing life is an intimate one.

NER Interns: Where are they now?

Doug LeCours

Doug during his time at Middlebury where he majored in Dance and English and
American Literatures. Photo by Alan Kimara Dixon.

Editorial intern Olivia Q. Pintair ’22.5 talks to Doug LeCours ’15—former NER intern and current writer, dancer, and choreographer—about creative inspiration, time, and embodiment through dance and fiction writing.

Olivia Q. Pintair: Where are you now, geographically and artistically, and what were some of the steps you took after Middlebury to get there?

Doug LeCours: I live in Ann Arbor, Michigan where I’m in my second semester of an MFA in fiction at the Helen Zell Writers’ Program, working on a collection of stories and a novel. After Middlebury, I moved to New York City and worked for seven years as a contemporary dancer and choreographer. During that time, my writing took the form of performance text and monologues directly related to the dance work I was making, with a few forays into critical writing. When the pandemic hit and my dance work momentarily evaporated, I started writing fiction in earnest again and fell back in love with reading. In a way, I feel like I’m playing catch-up—both on the contemporary literature that I missed while in the thick of a dance career and also on some literary classics and lesser known works. It’s a pleasure to be reminded there will always be more to read. 

OQP: As a dancer and a writer, what themes or questions is your work in conversation with? 

DL: Improvisation, queerness, sex, memory, nostalgia, wealth, scammers, and art history. 

OQP: Do you feel any overlap between your creative processes in dance and fiction writing? How do your experiences of these two mediums inform or stray from one another?

DL: In choreography and fiction, you’re dealing with time. It sounds so obvious, but it’s easy to forget, especially as a dancer inside of a performance where an hour can feel like three weeks or two seconds. Film is a bridge for me between dance and writing in looking at how filmmakers have chosen to deal with time. I’m always thinking about movies as I make dances, perform, or write.

I also think there’s something about having been a dancer—being a body in space, moving between highly specific states that often reach physical or emotional extremes—that has equipped me with an ability to really be with a character as they move through a story. A lot of the dance projects I was involved with were developed improvisationally, and although writing is a different medium, there’s that same sense of What can happen next? What moment can I shape that complicates / escalates / advances / undercuts what came before? I’m calling on a similar nimbleness to make confident choices and move forward compositionally. 

OQP: Is there a creative project you’ve most enjoyed working on recently? 

DL: Two dances come to mind: Julie Mayo’s Nerve Show and John Jasperse’s Visitation. Both required me to access performative qualities I wasn’t aware I possessed, and I’m deeply proud of both projects.

I had an experience writing a story this past fall where the story just came—less plugging and chugging, more of a rushing forth. I hadn’t had that experience in a while, and it was a pleasure to be able to follow the piece as it emerged from beginning to end.

OQP: Who inspires you creatively? 

DL: The many teachers I’ve had the pleasure of studying with at Middlebury and beyond, and the choreographers and directors with whom I’ve worked. 

So many artists and writers: Rachel Cusk, David Lynch, Miranda July, Michael Haneke, Mary Gaitskill, Patricia Highsmith, Fleur Jaeggy, James Baldwin, Sarah Michelson, John Cheever, Tere O’Connor. 

OQP: What are some things you learned as an undergraduate that most benefit you today in your professional and creative work?

DL: In both my studies of dance and creative writing at Middlebury, I was treated like an artist. I was taught early on that I didn’t have to wait for anyone’s permission to make something; as long as I was interested in it, it mattered.

Photo courtesy of Doug LeCours.

I also learned how to have a job and juggle scholarship and art-making. I worked all four years at the Box Office—and of course at NER, gaining some early insight into the literary landscape I’m entering again. These skills helped me to dive into the complicated Tetris game of dancing, writing, and paying for a life while living in New York.

OQP: Any book or music recommendations?

DL: Mary Gaitskill’s Veronica and all of her short stories. Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy. Leonard Michaels’ Sylvia. Alice Coltrane. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1. Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk (a perfect album). William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops—great writing music.

Last year I was directed toward a writer named Christopher Coe who died in 1994 during the AIDS crisis. He was a student of Gordon Lish, and wrote with the sentence level precision and gravitas I love and am working toward in my own writing. His two novels, I Look Divine and Such Times, are sharp and devastating. The brevity of his career is a major loss, but I’m glad we have these contributions.

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