Paige Towers
Photo by Clifton James
Bio
Paige Towers is a writer and freelancer living on the Washington coast, although she’s originally from Iowa. She is the author of The Sound of Undoing: A Memoir in Essays, published by the University of Nebraska Press in March 2023. Her second book, a work of literary journalism titled Good White Christian Family, is forthcoming from the University of Iowa Press in spring 2025. She earned an MFA in creative nonfiction from Emerson College and has received support from Bread Loaf, VCCA, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post,the Guardian, McSweeney’s,the Harvard Review, North American Review, Indiana Review, and many other publications.
While writing my first book, which deconstructs my relationship to sound, I learned something now obvious about birds: their songs evolved alongside the noises in their ecosystem. A water bird called the American dipper, for instance, has a loud, high-pitched call so it can be heard over rapids. This is evidence of the competitive nature of survival, yes, but there’s also something gentler there about how one’s voice is shaped and sustained by those around them.
Meaning, I am so deeply grateful to be named as a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, but I also need to thank my community of poets and writers first, as well as acknowledge the many worthy others whose time didn’t come this year.
And yet I guess it’s my turn to sing (!) so here it is: over these last very trying four years, I’ve completed research, interviews, and now a draft for a second book titled Good White Christian Family. It’s a work of literary journalism investigating an evangelical couple from Oregon who adopted eight children after the Korean War, told through the lens of a familicide that happened in Iowa City, while also examining the White saviorism and postcolonialism that still drive the intercountry adoption industry today. My brutal little book now has a publisher, but by receiving this generous funding from the NEA, I can complete it the way the subject deserves. Thank you.
My two-year-old child, Ramy, was the first to hear this good news about the fellowship, and, in response to my happy tears, he earnestly recited the ABC song, which felt sort of ceremonial? Sort of important? It was to me, at least. Listen: my gratitude is endless.