GW English Alums on the Move: CJ Powell

GW English Alum CJ Powell

GW English Alum CJ Powell: "Two of the investment banking managing directors in Project Finance with whom I worked had Bachelor of Arts degrees in Art History and Dance"

Like a lot of our department's majors, CJ Powell (she was then CJ Hall) headed for New York City with an interest in writing and editing.  Her journey through the worlds of art and business is an inspiring and instructive one.  She shares it with us here.

 First, tell us something about your time in the department.  You were a student of David McAleavey's.  Were you an English major?  Did you focus on Creative Writing?  Were there other professors who made an impression on you?

I enrolled at GWU in the Fall of 1979 to study Political Science, win an internship on the Hill, and change the world. Early Poli-Sci course requirements -- Intro to Statistical Social Science;  Intro to Computer Programming;  Scope & Methodology of Political Science -- dampened my enthusiasm, while I was energized by the English Department offerings of  Intro to Creative Writing and The Short Story.  In the Spring of my sophomore year I declared my major in American Literature.  It wasn’t a completely unexpected turn of events.  I had always written short stories and poetry and was the editor of my high school poetry magazine.  I loved being part of the poetry crowd on campus, participating in open poetry and fiction readings in the 5^th Floor lounge of the Marvin Center every Friday evening and hanging out with other writers.   I had the honor of being a member of the editorial staff for Volume 1 of  the G.W. Review’s 1980 founding issue, associate editor for fiction and poetry for Volume 2, and editor-in-chief for Volumes 3 and 4.  The campus literary magazine featured a Po’ Biz Calendar with listing of poetry and fiction activities in the DC area that kept me active in the thriving DC literary scene.  My writing appeared in campus publications The GW Hatchet, The Current, Wooden Teeth and George Mason University’s The George Mason Review.  During my years at GWU, a full-time employee could take classes for free.  I landed a secretarial position in the School of Business Administration and finished my studies tuition free in 1984 with a Bachelor of Arts in American Literature.  I obtained the American Literature degree through a Proseminar in American Literature that was offered at the time.  David McAleavey taught the creative writing classes I took, A.E. Claeyssens taught the Writing Fiction – The Novel course, and Robert Ganz taught American poetry.  These and all the other professors in the English Department deepened my knowledge, love and respect for American Literature.

You have clearly had an impressive career in banking.  What did you study after you graduated from GW?  Were you ever tempted to study further in the humanities?

My first job out of college was as a production assistant for The Living Stage, a non-profit professional improvisational theater company that was part of Arena State for over 30-years.  I responded to an ad in The Washington City Newspaper, and my GWU BA was an important credential in winning the position. Under the direction of Robert Alexander, Living Stage performed with men, women, children, teens, prisoners, disabled and disadvantaged people from all walks of life, teaching the importance of self-expression.  I was privileged to be a part of that artistic team for three years.  After I left Living Stage, I decided to return to my literary roots and enrolled in the 6-week Radcliffe Publishing Course.  I can’t remember who told me about the Radcliffe Publishing Course, but I’m very grateful to have learned about it.  It turned out to be an important credential; it got me both a job and an apartment in New York. My roommate-to-be previously took the course and was working in publishing.  She posted an ad for a roommate on the bulletin board at Radcliffe, knowing new graduates would be flocking to NYC.  She had a two bedroom 4th floor walk-up in Park Slope.  I called her and rented it sight unseen.  I was able to land a job as an editorial assistant at G.P. Putnam’s Sons. The position was advertised in The New York Times and the editor who hired me was familiar with The Publishing Course, and when she saw I was a GWU grad, she remarked, “Good school!”   It was a refrain I was to hear throughout my career.  I worked with Lisa Wager, editor to a variety of writers: detective, fiction, self-help, romance.  I read unsolicited scripts, did some copy editing and maintained her books’ production schedules.  After some time working for a publishing house, I found my sympathies for writers growing, and was able to work instead for a literary editor, the great Elaine Markson at Elaine Markson Literary Agency in Greenwich Village.  My good friend Lisa Callamaro, whom I’d met at Radcliffe, worked there and had told me about the literary assistant position. Lisa has since opened her own film and television agency in Beverly Hills.  I had fantastic exposure to all kinds of writers and literary events in and around the city.  Unfortunately, the pay as editorial and literary assistant was so low I had to get a second job to afford life in NYC, even sharing an apartment.  While I enjoyed moonlighting at Shakespeare & Co. Bookstore on the Upper West Side, a job advertised in The Village Voice, I grew tired of feeling overworked and poor.   My own writing had long since fallen away under the strain of two jobs.  I decided to look for a better paying position.

  In what ways did the literature grounding you got at GW contribute to your further education, and then your career?  Was there a big disconnect between literature and business?

In the early nineties in NYC, I figured the highest paying fields were investment banking and law.  I had a friend who worked as a paralegal for a NYC law firm and had heard stories about the long hours and crazed attorneys, so I went for something in finance. It was never my intent to sell out.  I hoped to find a decent paying 9-5 job that would finally leave me time to write. I took a job as a secretary at First Boston (the company has since merged with Credit Suisse).  While the position paid substantially more than the two jobs I’d been working combined, I remember my father being very disappointed that I wasn’t using my college degree, although I’m sure it was an important factor in being hired.  And he was right; none of the other secretaries had degrees.  However, I was surprised and delighted to find myself working with the highly intelligent and cultured men and women who bought and read the books, paid for the theater tickets, and talked about literature, art, history.  My characteristic hard work, writing, and organizational skills were very much appreciated. I was given the opportunity to work on reviewing, doing graphics and editing presentations.  After a couple of years I moved to a position at UBS (also through a newspaper ad), in the investment banking project finance department, my GWU degree once again keeping me in good stead.  Project finance is the financing of power plants, mining projects, infrastructure like toll roads and airports, telecommunications, and the projects are all over the globe.  I found the subject matter of the work varied and interesting and have worked in Project Finance ever since.  I found that, by taking on administrative projects that no one else wanted to do, I gained recognition and moved from secretary, to administrative assistant, to project manager, to associate.  I was able to work in the portfolio administration group where I was introduced to the voluminous documentation necessary for project finance deals.  I loved reading the credit and agency agreements, piecing together the operational and business duties of the banking work like a jigsaw puzzle. I worked for UBS for 7 years and in the last year my manager recommended me for credit training, a fantastic opportunity.  There was a reorganization at UBS and some of the managers I worked for moved to Deutsche Bank.  They looked me up and I moved to DB as an assistant treasurer in project finance doing portfolio administration.  Once at DB, I moved within the company and learned more about loan operations and management.  I moved to the  Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas project finance team where I became expert in reading documentation and eventually became Vice President and team leader of their transaction management team, responsible for negotiating and implementing new deals.  I’ve been at Citibank for the last four years, in their corporate trust shop, reviewing documentation and implementation of new deals as they relate to agency roles.  So many of the people I work with have a business or finance background, are expert in spreadsheets and analysis, and would rather poke a stick in their eyes than read a 400 page credit agreement word for word.  Basically, for the last several years I have a job where I read for a living, and I love it. 

What advice do you have for our majors who may be thinking of entering the business world?

Don’t be afraid to move around and try new paths.  I would never have as much appreciation for where I am today if I hadn’t tried different careers.  If you really have your heart set on doing creative work, it’s better to work hard and struggle than to work in a corporate environment for 75% of your life and think you’ll have brainpower left for imagination.  Business needs creative thinkers who can problem solve.  

 Is there anything in particular you miss about GW?  About college in general?

I loved being at a university that was in an urban environment, where you could experience the culture of the city, with professors like David McAleavey to guide you.  I loved the nurture and support of the Poetry Crowd, Lilian Weber, Ron Weber, Richard Flynn, A.L. Nielsen, Hugh Walthall, Paul Brucker and many others.  While I’m happy with my story and where I am today, I think if I was going to do anything differently, it would be to understand and appreciate the importance of being in a creative community.  I think if I had continue to seek out other people who were working to write, and tell stories, I would have been able to take my writing further than I did.  At the end of the day, I don’t think I had the courage and devotion for the sacrifice necessary to live the life of a writer, but the background I experienced provided me with the skills that have made me a success in where I am today.

Read More

GW Alum Elizabeth Stevens Publishes Population, a Novel

"Sharing my work [at GW], and reading the work of others, critiquing and being constructively critiqued, got me thinking about aspects of writing fiction that I had never thought of before.” – An interview with GW grad Elizabeth Stephens.

Elizabeth Stevens has just published her
first novel, Population

1. I'm as intrigued by your life story as I am by your just-published novel, Population, so let's start there.  You're currently living, I think, in South Africa. How did that come about?

Yes! I am currently living in Johannesburg. The road was long from GWU to Jozi, but I’ll do my best to give you the shorten version. At GWU I studied international affairs with a concentration in the Middle East. My sophomore year I studied abroad in Cairo, but was evacuated in 2011 to Amman at the onset of the Egyptian Revolution.  I completed the scholastic year there. In 2012, I spent another semester studying abroad in Paris, but my real passion was and still is for the Middle East, so upon graduation I returned to the region with an internship at the UNRWA (the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees) in Beirut, Lebanon. Given the spillover from the conflict in Syria, and the fact that I was living in the Shia, Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs, I was forced out due to violence. At this point I had nowhere to go, and rather than return to the States, I decided to move in with my boyfriend, who was then completing his masters degree at the IHEID in Geneva.

Moving to Geneva, I found a position as communications officer within a human rights organization, Future of Human Rights Forum. Over the course of the next year, I started managing some of their communications assistance projects targeting youth in underserved regions. While the experience was an unforgettable one, after a year I was ready to move on and when my boyfriend’s company opened an office in Johannesburg, I figured, why not? 

So that’s what brought me to Johannesburg, where I currently work for JvO Consulting, a firm that specializes in strategic communications. Our clients are mostly mining related and range from big intergovernmental organizations to independent governments to private sector mining companies. The work I do now is much different from what I was doing before, but also so much fun! Working as an independent consultant also affords me time to work on my book(s), so I really couldn’t be happier.

2.  You've also traveled the world a good deal as, I gather, a journalist.  Tell me something about that.  Did your background as a literature student at GW inspire/enable that in any way?

Absolutely! My entire academic career at GWU has helped me invaluably throughout the course of my career. Being a journalist in the Middle East would not have been possible without the knowledge I gained throughout my international relations coursework and my early writing classes helped me identify the differences among research, literary, and journalistic forms of content. My coursework at GWU helped me become a more concise writer. As I moved across the Middle East from Cairo to Beirut to Tunis, where I did some consulting work with the OECD, I was able to translate that knowledge into freelance journalism. From there, I had political articles on the Middle East published in a number of online magazines across Europe and Africa. I also hosted a travel column in a UK-based magazine by and for women.

 

3.  I've read the first couple of chapters of  Population.  It's a dystopian story of women trying to survive in a lawless post-apocalyptic America.  Talk a little more about its plot, and about your long-established interest in the horror-story mode.

Horror and romance are strangely enough my two favorite genres and I absolutely adore any artistic work that combines both. My favorite authors and titles includeThe Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson, Hellbound Heart, Abarat and Mister B. Goneby Clive Barker and pretty much everything ever written by Stephen King. I have previously published short stories in the horror genre, almost all of which are touched with elements of fantasy.

I like to consider Population a horror-meets-romance, action-adventure fest. Abel, my protagonist, is a young woman struggling to keep herself and her family alive in world run by beings from another planet, the Others. The Others hunger for power and also for the taste of human flesh.  All but extinct, Abel is one of the last humans left alive in the desolate and harsh landscape that survivors have come to call Population.  She is calculating and keeps a list of rules to live by that guarantee her survival, but when her best friend’s daughter is taken she has to make a choice: risk her own life, or leave a young girl to die. 

Choosing to abandon her list of rules and defy all her better instincts, Abel embarks on a dangerous quest across Population.  Along the way, she finds herself in an unlikely alliance with one of the things she hates and fears most -- one of the Others. In order to rescue her best friend’s daughter she’ll have to delve further into his world than she could have ever imagined. In doing so, she’ll also have to learn how to trust as he offers her something utterly foreign in Population: hope.

I’d also like to add that I really love Abel as a main character.  She’s a strong female protagonist of color. In my opinion, even though the market has recently opened up for women with an increased number of female leads in popular fiction, there is still an annoying shortage of characters of color. I have one white parent of European ancestry, one black parent of African descent. As a mixed race child, I remember how difficult it was to identify with the characters in the books I read because none of them ever looked like me. They were all white and most of them were also male. So when I first wrote my very first story -- a science fiction saga that I drafted at the age of 11 -- I made sure to include a diverse range of characters. I’ve stuck to this trend ever since.

4.  Do you have other novels brewing?  Are they in the same genre?

Always. I must have two dozen stories that are in varying stages of completion -- or incompletion in most cases -- on the backburner.  The one I’m most excited about at the moment is Population, part two -- don’t worry that won’t be the final title. ***Spoiler alert*** Population ends on a cliff hanger so a second part is absolutely necessary to continue Kane and Abel’s saga.

Population part one is quite graphic, particularly in how it deals with being a woman in violent environments. I wrote the novel this way because I feel that these are realities faced by real women living in war zones and conflict environments. As I mentioned, a good portion of my undergraduate career at GWU was spent studying human rights in the Middle East. Living in Cairo during the Egyptian Revolution also showed me how desperate the plight for women can be when law and order collapses. Abel’s experiences in Population have been largely shaped by my own experiences in and study of conflict and post-conflict areas. Unfortunately for those weak of heart -- or stomach -- the second part ofPopulation will continue to pick up on these issues, many of which we don’t discuss or talk about in our society.

You can expect to see the second part to Abel’s journey hit the shelves in April 2016. As for my other works, they are generally of the same genre -- that grey area where horror and romance may meet.  Some are more fantasy driven while others stick to the real world, and others are other worlds altogether! Whether I’m working on a long or short work, or an adult or young adult manuscript, one thing that remains consistent is my strong lead characters. That, and the fact that most of my books are pretty insane.

5.  Tell us something about your GW experience.  Did you take literature as well as creative writing courses?  Were there professors who had a special impact on you?

One of my biggest undergraduate regrets is that I did not get a chance to take as many writing courses as I would have liked. I took the required writing courses and though I was loath to do it, they helped me invaluably in determining how to write research reports and journalistic pieces. As someone who has previously worked as a journalist and who is now working in communications -- and loving it! -- these courses have had an immense and positive influence on my professional success.

One of my favorite courses I took at GWU however, was a fiction workshop with Tim Johnston. I hadn’t had much experience in writing shorter works and was nervous to share my writing with my peers, as I am also an extremely private person when it comes to my artistry. This class changed all that. Sharing my work and reading the work of others, critiquing and being constructively critiqued, got me thinking about aspects of writing fiction that I had never thought of before. I learned to pay more attention to mechanics and structure so that now when I write I avoid simple yet damaging mistakes. Several of the works I wrote for that class I later went on to publish.

6.  Do you have any advice for current students who might want to pursue a writing career something like yours?

I have three main pieces of advice for students of literature: the first is to always say yes! Don’t let opportunities slip by, because you never know how they may help you in the future. Though I was only ever paid for one piece of writing before I published my book -- a short horror story that placed 5^th in an online competition -- every single article or story that I put out there strengthened my foundations as an author, and gave increased credibility to my later works.

My second piece of advice would be to network, network, network! Things are changing rapidly in the world. Access to technology and global consumerism have lowered the barriers to entry into many industries, making being an author more accessible in some ways, but in others, significantly more difficult. While it’s easier now than ever to publish a book, it’s also harder to find a publisher or literary agent to represent you.

My freshman year in college was the first time I completed a full-length manuscript. I spent years afterwards trying to find an agent to take on this young adult book. I wrote query after query and received rejection after rejection.  Don’t get me wrong, I had some bites in the beginning and enough encouragement from publishers to keep me going, but nothing concrete ever came of it. But one day -- the day that I finished writing draft one of Population -- my mom met a woman who just happened to be opening a publishing company and who just happened to be focusing on authors and characters of color. She read my novel that evening and loved it so much that six months later I’m looking my own book up on Amazon.

My final piece of advice to new and aspiring authors would be to never give up, never surrender! I think the hardest part about being an author is finding the time and the will to continue in such a competitive (and sometimes less than lucrative) industry. However, my books arrived today in paperback and I can tell you that there is no better feeling than holding a physical copy of your own book in your hands. It makes every moment of writer’s block and disappointment and rejection worth it a thousand times over. So don’t ever give up on your passion and don’t ever stop writing. For me, I can tell you that it doesn’t even feel like an option. Writing has been stitched into my skin and into my soul.

Congratulations Elizabeth!

Population can be found via: 

Amazon 

Googlebooks

Googleplay 

NubiTales LLC

Elizabeth Stephens's Facebook 

Elizabeth Stephens's Twitter

Read More

GW English Alums on the Move: Amanda Panitch Publishes Damage Done

Amanda Panitch
GW English BA '11

"My Honor's Thesis Played a Fundamental Role in the Development of My Writing" - GW English Grad Amanda Panitch, interviewed by Professor Margaret Soltan.

MS: Let's start this interview with a link to your website, which announces the exciting news that a young adult novel of yours, Damage Done, has just been picked up by Random House.  Congratulations!  Tell us about its plot.

Damage Done will be available
July 21, 2015

AP: Thank you! In short, DAMAGE DONE is about Julia Vann, whose twin brother commits a school shooting that causes her to lose everything and everyone she loved - including him - and start anew. A year later, she's finally starting to heal when her brother's old psychologist shows up with an agenda of his own. Neither Julia nor the psychologist is telling the whole truth, and the story twists and turns from there. Bustle and Barnes & Noble have compared it to GONE GIRL and E. Lockhart's WE WERE LIARS. DAMAGE DONE will officially hit shelves on July 21st, 2015.

Of course I remember working with you on your excellent honors thesis here at GW.  Could you talk a bit about your experience in the department?  Were there particular courses/professors you found valuable, especially in terms of your current job as an associate literary agent, and in your own writing?

My honors thesis (and you, Professor Soltan!) actually played a fundamental role in the development of my writing. In my thesis, I wrote about the trope of The Chosen One and the development of The Chosen One through time, drawing upon Joseph Campbell's universal hero's journey from THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES. I used Campbell's hero's journey as a guideline when I was learning how to plot, and I still draw on it when I'm outlining. In addition to my work with you on the thesis, Professor Alcorn's honors seminar was instrumental in helping me workshop and develop my theory and ideas.

Outside my thesis, I enjoyed my experience in the GW English Department. I especially enjoyed my classes on medieval literature with Professors Hsy and Dugan, and the Jewish Lit Live class with Professor Moskowitz. Professor Willis (in the Creative Writing Program) told me I could be a writer - her pep talk has returned to me many times as I've made my way through the brutal publishing world and helped keep me going. And I can't talk about favorite professors and courses without naming Professor Cheryl Vann in the Honors Program, whose courses on world literature and history and culture not only strengthened my reading and writing skills but gave me so many sparks of inspiration (along with her last name, which I borrowed for my main character).

Was it difficult to go to New York City and try to make it in the literary world?  Did you consider other options?  What would you say to current GW students thinking of this path?

I came to New York to work in book publishing, most of which is located here - NYC is expensive, and if it weren't for my job at the agency, I'd probably live somewhere else! I'd always wanted to write, but I knew better than to count on it as a career path (at least at first). So I got an internship and then a job at a literary agency and wrote on the side, though I actually didn't tell any of my colleagues that I was a writer until I'd signed with an agent myself. 

I would advise current GW students who want to write not to depend entirely on that - often it takes several years of writing before it pays enough where you can live on it, if it ever does. Find a career you enjoy - for me, it was/is working in publishing - and write as you're working. It was a huge comfort to me to know that, should the writing thing never actually work out, I still had a career I loved anyway, and that took a lot of the stress and the pressure off. 

Were you ever tempted to go on for a PhD in literature?  Why or why not?

I never thought seriously about getting my PhD - I didn't think I wanted to work in academia. 

Do you have future writing projects in mind?  Could you describe some of them?

Yes! The deal with Random House was actually for two books, so I have DAMAGE DONE coming out this summer and then another young adult psychological thriller coming out in 2016. I'm currently working on a third.

Read More

GW English Alums on the Move: The Poetry of Andrew Kozma

Andrew Kozma

"GW was the place where I first dreamed myself as a writer."

GW English and Dramatic Literature Alum and poet Andrew Kozma recently had one of his poems selected for inclusion this year in The Best American Poetry.  Professor Margaret Soltan caught up with Andrew to talk about poetry and pedagogy, and about his time at GW.  The poem of Andrew's that Professor Soltan mentions is reproduced at the bottom of the interview.

First, congratulations on having one of your poems selected, by Sherman Alexie and David Lehman, for this year's edition of The Best American Poetry.  I look forward to reading it. 

Meanwhile, I love your poem, "Ode to the Love Bug," which concludes O Tiny Fuckers, teach us to let the world consume us.  I find your 'ode to bugs' series of poems wonderful, the work of a postmodern John Donne.  Tell me something about your approach to poetry, your influences, etc.

First, thank you so much for the comparison to Donne. Though he’s not a direct influence of my poetry in the past, he was definitely an inspiration for the insect odes. Part of what I wanted to do was combine the highest diction with the lowest possible subject, which is in Donne’s line of conflating the spiritual with the sexual.

 My approach to poetry is very language-oriented, the sound of a phrase calling forth another series of words. Ideally, in successful poems, the meaning of the whole poem is constructing itself as I write.

 One aspect of my writing which helps my free-wheeling composing style is that I’m somewhat addicted to form. While I think this attachment to symmetry has always been in me, William Logan at the University of Florida really brought it out completely. The benefit to being fluent in the sonnet and relatively comfortable with various poetic meters is that I can let my mind focus on the form, which then frees up my unconscious to reveal the metaphors and poetic ideas I didn’t even know I wanted to talk about.

 I’m not sure I have poets who influence me in the way that I feel like I’m emulating them, but there are a number of poets whose work I admire. Anne Carson. John Berryman. Anthony Hecht. In some ways, it’s easier to point out younger poets who I feel I’m writing like, who seem like kin. Lisa Olstein and her book Radio Crackling, Radio Gone, for example.

You've written in a number of prose as well as poetry modes.  Talk a little about the other kinds of writing you do.  

I like writing every genre except that of academic essays: non-fiction, plays, novels, stories, flash fiction, and poetry. In every case, the mode of writing does something different for me, allows me to tell a specific kind of story or create a specific effect. For example, the difference between fiction and drama: in fiction I’m often trying to make the unreal seem real, while in drama I’m twisting the real so it seems unreal.

 I’m also interested in storytelling through unconventional means. I did a Kickstarter a few years ago (The Postcard Story) which told a single story through four postcards, each postcard being a picture (taken by a photographer friend of mine) meant to comment on the story obliquely, almost like images in a poem.

Do you enjoy teaching writing?

 Currently, I’m teaching technical writing, essentially the bare bones of professionally-oriented writing. Strangely, being skilled in poetry is useful for this task since both technical writing and poetry deal in compact forms, saying the most in the smallest amount of space possible. Granted, poetry focuses on allusiveness while technical writing (business letters and the like) concerns itself with facts and the manipulation of the facts—the more I talk about both, the more similar they seem. 

What did your experience at GW mean to you?  Were there particular professors who made an impression on you?

 GW was the place where I first dreamed myself as a writer. I ended up taking a creative writing course every semester and majored in Dramatic Literature partly because the required courses allowed me to focus on what I wanted (writing) while avoiding what I didn’t want (everything else). My interests have always been varied, so in the first few years I dabbled in Physics (which would’ve stolen me except for the math involved) and Philosophy (which spit me out) before simply settling on English mostly because in studying literature I could study everything else as well.

The professors who made the most impact on me were Patricia Griffith and Faye Moskowitz. Patricia was so supportive with my playwriting and encouraged me to do whatever I wanted within the form—as a fan of the absurdists and Eugene Ionesco in particular, this encouragement was very welcome. Faye, on the other hand, was encouraging more simply by who she was and is. She gave me the sense that I could do anything, and that if obstacles showed up in my path, I should simply push against them until they gave way.

 Where did you study after GW?  What sort of degrees did you pursue? 

 After GW, I took a few years off and then went to the University of Florida for an MFA in Poetry, directly followed by heading to the University of Houston for a Ph.D. in English Literature and Creative Writing.

 For our current students who may be thinking about doing similar things, could you talk about the decision to pursue higher study in literature, in creative writing?  Was it difficult to make the choice to do this?  Why or why not?

 1. I’ve always enjoyed school, and never been in a hurry to leave it.

 2. After my experiences at GW, I was pretty sure that writing was what I wanted to do. As far as I could tell, the best way to do more writing—while learning about writing and studying literature—was an MFA program. After I completed my MFA, I was still hungry, and so looked at Ph.D. programs.

 3. The choice wasn’t difficult to make, but I had a lot of things going for me. I had no debt (due to lucky scholarships and generous parents) and no other obligations. Also, I only applied to schools which provided funding so that I didn’t have to pay for any of my post-graduate studies. 

4. Finally, there was no job I was itching to get out into the world to do. I wanted to write, and if you can go to a graduate program that pays you for being there, then it is sort of like having a fellowship specifically to write. I didn’t go into higher education expecting a job to be there waiting at the end of it, and you shouldn’t either if you are studying writing. Writing itself is the end point, and whatever you can do to make that happen is what you should do, whether that’s taking a job that allows you freedom outside of the job to focus on writing or going on to get your MFA.

 What, if anything, do you miss about GW, Foggy Bottom, the east coast?  Does where you're located make any difference to the sort of writing you do? 

I miss the city a lot. I miss being able to walk across the breadth of D.C. in a day through sidewalks crowded with people. I miss the way the city empties out at night to become its own ghost.

Where I write definitely influences the sort of writing I do—or, more specifically, what I end up writing about. The writing itself has a lag time, though, in that even after having lived in Houston for thirteen years now, I feel that it’s only just becoming a major force in my writing. It’s a city that’s constantly changing, reinventing itself, re-constructing, not its ideals, but its body, the roads, the buildings, the parks, all of it ever in flux.

What are some of your future writing projects?

I have been working on young adult novels recently, mostly science-fiction and fantasy. Though I never think of myself as a horror writer—though my poems might disagree—each novel is strewn with horrific elements. To return to an earlier question, one of the benefits of writing in multiple genres is that you learn things about your own writing you might not otherwise, in the same way you learn more about your native language by studying other languages.

On the poetry front, I have a new manuscript consisting of the bug poems plus songs—more persona-esque poems sparked by states of being or, more concretely, how someone might be identified. A couple of the latter, to give an example, are the “Song of the Starving” and the “Song of the Psychopath.”

Sometime this year I’ll be doing another postcard-based Kickstarter called Mailpocalypse that, if funded, will tell the story of the end of the world via alternate futures described in letters by those experiencing it. This will happen over the course of a year with one postcard being written each day, and then collected into an on-line repository (so that everyone can read all the postcards) that might then be further collected into a book.

Ode to the Love Bug

O Unthreatening Sex Fiend, climb your gendered body-twin
and strive to futurize. Four days alive (a little more

if male) is barely time enough for love, or even death.
But, O Fragile Gloves, how you throw your bodies into it!

In smokes of thousands, you dress the baking highway
and declare your passion to every passing glass. Do you see

yourself eternal? Even as you die, your angel-self in air
declares another love affair, and those two, too,

are crushed against the grill of this fine day. O girl, come with me
and love as only insects can. Let us be reborn

a hundred times an hour to fresh our faces to each other’s lips.
O Tiny Fuckers, teach us to let the world consume us.

*******************

("Ode to the Love Bug" originally appeared in Kenyon Review.)

Read More

GW English Alums on the Move: Stephanie Gardner

Stephanie Gardner (BA '08)

STEPHANIE GARDNER: 'Soak up the world.  Really look, really listen.'

Since Stephanie Gardner graduated from our department, she's been a busy and prolific filmmaker based in New York City. (You can check out her website here.)   We talked to her about film, literature, and her GW English department experience.

You're doing all sorts of exciting things with film, and we'll get to that in a moment.  First, though:  Talk about your time in the GW English department.  Favorite professors?  Courses?  Particular memories?

I have nothing but fond memories of my time in the GW English Department as a Creative Writing minor.  Classes that stand out in my memory are Faye Moskowitz’s Fiction Writing course, which introduced me to the value of  writing workshops and gave me confidence and insight into who I am as a writer.  This was, perhaps, the early stage of discovering my “voice” as a writer, and Faye has been inspirational and encouraging to this always evolving journey.  Jane Shore’s poetry class helped foster my love for poetry, which every so often I’ll dabble in; and Tony Lopez’s Critical Methods course was instrumental to who I am today as a person and artist.  I wish I could have taken every class Professor Lopez had to offer.  He ignited a passion for discourse and discovery in me that I will never lose.  I sometimes go back and re-read some of the essays and theorists assigned in that class, and occasionally I still run crazy ideas by him.

Are there ways in which your literature courses here contributed to the sort of work you do in film?  And in poetry?

Absolutely!  My love and appreciation for literature, which largely came about during my time at GW, remains a huge influence on my work and outlook on life.  Pieces of literature I was introduced to at GW that continue to influence my work include Roland Barthes’ essay on the “Death of The Author,” Dostoyevsky’s “Notes From Underground” and James Joyce’s collection of short stories, “Dubliners.”  I’ve also always been a big fan of T.S. Eliot and his stream of consciousness language.

I must add that Holy Dugan’s Shakespeare course, which I took for a full year, had a huge impact on me and my understanding and appreciation for Shakespeare.  I worked on a collaboration with The New York Shakespeare Exchange’s “The Sonnet Project,” which commissioned filmmakers to recreate each of Shakespeare’s Sonnets into short films.  I directed Sonnet 151 and had a blast with it!  I believe my interest in connecting with this group and making the film is largely due to the work I did in Professor Dugan’s Class.

 Did your preparation in the department help in terms of your graduate work at the Tisch school?  In what way?

My classes at GW gave me a strong foundation in literature and history.  I was the youngest in my graduate  class of eight writers.  I came into the Graduate Dramatic Writing program with no prior experience in Screenwriting, one of the three focuses of the program, but made up for it by having a solid English and Literature background, and because of that, became the go-to-person for matters regarding literature and theater history.  So much so that I distributed my notes from GW undergrad classes to my classmates in grad school, and it became a glossary of sorts for our small class, which we would reference from time to time to help with our understanding of play and film analysis.

You've recently directed a couple of short films with romantic themes.  Could you tell us more about them?

The reason I keep coming back to romantically themed pieces, I believe, is because it is such a universal concept.  Love and sex.  This language is spoken and understood all across the world, no matter what your origin is.  And if we can speak a common language, we can tap into so much more in terms of understanding others; their culture, their beliefs.  My two most recent films, which are romantically bent, are:  And If I Stay, a fourteen minute short, which I describe as a “dark, romantic drama,” and, If I Had A Piano (I’d Play You The Blues), (currently in post production), and which I describe as “an explorative romance in five movements.”  This short art piece will end up being about five or six minutes long.  It’s crazy how much effort we put into such short pieces, but I see it as a reflection of love and romance; sometimes the best moments in life are fleeting.  

And If I Stay is a darker look into a romantic relationship.  A young woman traveling abroad meets a mysterious man.  What begins as a one night stand turns into a woman caught between the fantasy of this man and the reality of the relationship, which goes on for an ambiguous amount of time in the world of the film.  As she continues to uncover darker and darker secrets about him, she continues to stay.  Is it out of the thrill of it?  Curiosity?  Does she simply have nowhere else to go?  I like to create work that offers more questions about human behavior than answers, which can sometimes be frustrating for audiences, but it’s how I operate.  I believe if a film can stir up some questions and conflicting emotions, perhaps it will open a portal into the heart and mind of the viewer, open up questions they never knew they needed to ask themselves.  After all, filmmaking is about the journey, and it is one meant to be shared between auteur and audience.

The cross-over between reality and fantasy is a common theme in my work.  Every artist has an obsession and I guess you could say this one is mine.  It is a theme I constantly return to and If I Had A PIano is the most recent attempt to capture this.  One day, a thought popped into my head. “50% of life is lived for the fantasy,” and I sought to bring this idea to life in the form of an experimental short film.  That is, desire drives us:  all humans, on all levels of society have desires (some healthy, some not) and it is the fantasies that often keep us going through life, or bring a smile to our face when we escape into the fantasies in our mind.  And cinema, for some, is a form of escape, which I think can be a beautiful way to temporarily live out fantasies and see desires erupt on screen in a nondestructive way.  So my goal with If I Had A Piano is very different from And If I Stay.  Instead of being focused on story and characters, I decided to focus on mood and sensuality.  

 Do you have any advice for our majors in terms of grad school, jobs, the creative life?  

1. Don’t burn your bridges.  This was advice given to my graduate school class early on and it has always stuck with me.  It’s a small world out there, and the film and theater communities are even smaller.  If you have to leave a project, part ways with dignity and humility.  Pick your battles wisely.  
2. When you find a person or group that you have a positive collaboration with, stick with them.  It can be difficult to find the right chemistry between artists, but once you do, collaborations can be fun and effective.
3. Be proactive but don’t try to do everything yourself.  Sometimes you have to wear many hats in order to get a project done.  Especially on an independent, low budget scale.  But remember what your hats are.  Nobody is going to believe in your work as much as yourself, so if you don’t give it your all, nobody will, but remember what your specific strengths are.  Continue to work on improving your skill set in any way possible and don’t be afraid to delegate tasks to others who are strong in other areas.  Filmmaking, especially, is a collaborative medium. It is said “it takes a village,” so don’t try to wear every hat at once because the work will ultimately suffer for it.  Of course, I say this and yet I am often writing, directing, and producing my own pieces, which is largely due to limited funds, but my directing suffers when I am wearing the producer hat.  If I have to do it, however, I try to remember which hat I have on and which hat I should have on so that these inner personalities don’t come into conflict.
4. Absorb everything.  The more you experience, the more you have to draw from and the more interesting your work can become.  No matter what your profession, soak up the world.  Really look, really listen.  Don’t just go to a place so that you can say you’ve been there.  Take yourself out of the picture and walk around with your eyes opened and your ears alert.  Take snapshots in your mind and write down significant interactions or situations you observe, because you’ll always forget the details later.  Try foods you never thought you’d try.  If a door opens unexpectedly, walk through it and see what you encounter.  Every experience, good and bad, makes you a more well rounded person, and it’s the ones you least expect that will change your life.  This is cliche advice, but we have cliches for a reason.

What are some future projects you'd like to work on?

Currently, I’m directing a multi-media theater piece (what we’re calling an “educational interactive performance art exhibit”), The Day After MLK, which centers around the death of Malcolm X and the years to follow, culminating with the death of Martin Luther King, Jr.  The show, produced by Unexpected Artistry, is through the eyes of three security guards for Malcolm X and takes the audience through the individual journeys of these three men, as they cope with the death of their leader and friend in the ever shifting Civil Rights Movement.  This is an ongoing project, which is going up in April at the Shabazz Center in Harlem (the old Audubon Ballroom) at the site of Malcolm X’s assassination, and we hope to eventually take this show on the road and into classrooms across America.

I am also in the research stage of a series of short documentary projects.  I am very interested in the history of Cuba and its current relationship status with America.  I am trying to find an avenue to pursue some human interest stories that relate to current events in that region.

Ultimately, the goal is to make a feature film.  This takes time, funds, and experience, so I will be taking my time with this endeavor.  Each project is a stepping stone to the next; building portfolios and experience.  I have already begun drafting a script for a feature film that I hope will become my feature directing debut.  You guessed it, it’s a romance!  In the meantime, I am also developing a feature script for fun, as an exercise to strengthen my writing, Sunday Before Buddha, which is an action thriller set in South Korea, based on some experiences I had traveling there during my time living in South East Asia.

Thanks Stephanie!

GW Alums: We'd love to feature your story in this series. Contact our Alumni Liaison, Professor Margaret Soltan here. 

Read More