I remember how excited I was to receive my acceptance letter to Washington University in St. Louis’ Creative Writing Program in 2011. I was a rising senior and so nervous about college life; writing seriously, at the time, seemed a distant dream. Enter Eileen G’Sell, poet. That summer, she taught us about abstractions, about combing through our language and picking out the cliches like nits– it was an important lesson and it has changed my prose entirely.
Those three weeks were life changing. I met some lovely students, many of whom I kept in touch with. My closest friend from the program, Eriko Kay, is studying Gender Studies and Studio Art at Harvard. She also happens to live in Brooklyn this summer! Eriko is interning at MTV and we had an emotionally overwhelming but utterly satisfying reunion with Eileen on Monday.
I feel so lucky to have been able to keep in touch with other writers from CWP and reminisce. Eriko and I hung out after brunch with Eileen and it was as if nothing had changed! We went to Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn, a lovely independent bookstore. Both of us are voracious readers and of course we couldn’t help but grab a new subway read. I picked up a short story collection, of course, “No One Belongs Here More Than You” by Miranda July, and Eriko bought my recommended “White Teeth” by Zadie Smith (who was Bryn Mawr’s Emily Balch Speaker last year!).
I even found a book quite familiar to me: “The Last Flight of Poxl West,” by my professor, mentor, and friend Daniel Torday, who is up for tenure this year as head of the Creative Writing Program at Bryn Mawr! I was so excited to see one of my favourite writers gaining recognition.
It looks like so far, Brooklyn has surprised me indeed!
