New England Review

NER Interns: Where are they now?

Jenn Shapland

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.

NER Interns: Where are they now?

Cedar Attanasio

Cedar Attanasio while at Middlebury (left) and currently (right)

NER winter intern Regina Fontanelli ’22 talks to Cedar Attanasio ’11.5, former NER intern and current Associated Press reporter, about becoming a reporter and his advice for budding journalists.

Regina Fontanelli: Tell us briefly, where are you now, both geographically and professionally?

Cedar Attanasio: I cover education for the Associated Press out of Santa Fe, New Mexico. It’s a hybrid role in two ways. It’s a local reporting job where we try to find news our readers can use in the state. It’s also a national reporting job where we look for ways that the Southwest is informing conversations on education and poverty across the country. It’s a text-focused position, but I’ve carved out a place for still photography and video journalism in the role as well.

RF: What was your road to becoming a reporter at AP? Have you always wanted to be a journalist?

CA: I couldn’t get a journalism job straight out of Middlebury so I focused on the skills that set me apart from my competition. I learned photography (from friends) and Portuguese (at MLS), flew myself to Brazil on a credit card in 2014, and got my first bylines freelancing coverage of the soccer World Cup.

RF: I’ve noticed you’ve worked for a few different publications in the past and reported on a variety of stories. Is there anything you’ve learned that you would want to share with budding journalists?

CA: Unless you are so incredibly talented that your favorite job opportunities are dropping in your lap, don’t be afraid to write at a level that is below your tastes and not perfectly aligned with your values. Ghost writing. Blogging. All writing is good experience. Paid writing with an audience is better experience. 

The same is true editorially. I wrote for left-leaning and right-leaning news organizations. It helped me find my true calling, which is the AP’s culture of advancing the power of facts. If that sounds boring or cliche to you it’s okay—many partisans or activists of all political stripes are contributing to the national conversation in their own way.

RF: How long does it take you to research for a piece and what is your writing process like?

CA: My enterprise stories take between four days and four months to execute. There are always a few in the pipeline and some fall through. My writing process is a painful mess that starts with pages of notes distilled into graphs and broken up by diversions: walks, video games, etc. One of the most important parts of my writing process is to figure out what images will complement a story. Multimedia is central to my process, and iterates into the color and quotes that end up in the text.

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

CA: I came to Middlebury wanting to become a geography professor. The appreciation for data, mapping, and migration I gained there inform my work every day. By my super-senior semester I had found another calling. I studied with now-retired professor Chris Shaw, worked at the Middlebury Campus, and read Ted Connover’s work. I abandoned my geography thesis to do an internship at National Geographic. Interning at the New England Review was an extension of that and allowed me to deepen my interest in storytelling, the art of the pitch, and the reality of the slush pile.

RF: Thank you so much for your time and wisdom, Cedar!

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