Choosing writing as a profession often feels like I’m just constantly wounding myself with subjectivity. It’s both a privilege and stressor to have made my passion into a career, and to be honest, there have been (and still are) times when I’ve thought I made the wrong decision. Being a writer in the academy—that is, being a writer and a professor of writing—has been an exhausting and fraught road; I can only say “believe in yourself” so many times before the statement becomes more armor than methodology.

Receiving this fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts is emboldening. I knew I needed more financial support so that I could create time to write, but I didn’t know how much I needed the validation until I received it. This fellowship will enable me to progress on my second short story collection, a short memoir, and two novels… all of which I plan to work on with the gleeful abandon of one who is renewed with purpose and drive. I hope that what I can conjure into existence will enter into conversation with the beauty and absurdity and language and complications offered up to the world by other writers, because literature sustains me, and I know it sustains others. Writing and reading is community, and I find a lot of comfort in knowing that even though our practice is often solitary, we’re all still doing it together and that across time, place, and space, we’re building monumental art. I am beyond indebted to the stories, poems, and essays that have been revelatory for my thinking, process, and growth. Wado to all the writers whose work has inspired me to follow this path and whose work entertains, motivates, and feeds humankind.