SUSTAINABILITY WRITING AWARDS
In the fall of 2022, as part of my work with the Office of Sustainability at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, I developed, launched, and judged a (now-annual) campus-wide sustainability writing contest. We awarded three winners, each from a different discipline, who submitted essays about the theme of resilience, and we promoted their work at a sustainability symposium and on a sustainability podcast. To my knowledge, this marks the first sustainability writing contest at a major university in the United States.
Our understanding of climate change, and how to subdue it, begins with the numbers and molecules of science. It also begins with things: electric grids, farms, giant steel windmills, oil rigs, smog, petroleum, melting glaciers, fires, and floods. But what about words? What can drops of ink, mere pixels, do against the sixth extinction, against the drought and fires and floods? Equations, methods, charts, large immovable objects—and words? [preface, year 1]
We find a wide scope of topics and approaches: death and beauty; listening and compelling; lyric and elegy; mercilessness and wonder. This year’s winners speak in all the complex ways of the climate crisis, giving voice to an era future generations will look back on like lost snowdays, abandoned resolutions, or the discovery and reemergence of rusty patched bumble bees, their unexpected and marvelous flights. [preface, year 2]
THE OBJECT SERIES
In April 2021, I published in The Smart Set about teaching writing at UW-Madison. Shortly after, the magazine and I curated a series of some of the best short essays students wrote in my classes. Below you will find my essay on teaching Knausgaard’s seasons quartet, as well as three young talented writers’ object essays on a pair of MMA gloves, a father’s hands, and a pillow.
I have written enough on this topic. Who are the writers now? Who were the writers, always? All of us, if we are patient and dedicated and receptive to the world. If we carve a few true and simple words out of the fibers of the page. In the next few weeks, you will discover three new thrilling writers in this short series of things and tales from the physical and internal world. Listen to the whispers of their lives. Dwell in the patient, spacious voices of their prose. [preface]
TEACHING THE OBJECT ESSAY; OR, WHO ARE THE WRITERS NOW?
THE SMART SET — April 15, 2021
In 2017 I entered the PhD program at UW-Madison because they would pay me to read and secretly I could use most of that time to write. I felt I had wasted the previous year working at a restaurant to pay off loans — not reading, not writing. I had squandered my prose style, I thought, and spent too much time with others. Now, in Wisconsin, people would not matter, and I would become a writer again in my self-exile, armed with solitude, a healthy lonely melancholy, discipline, and books. […]
MMA GLOVES
THE SMART SET — MAY 4, 2021
First, my preface, and Andrea Crummy on MMA gloves and redemption:
From an outside perspective, seeing a grown 6-foot-3 man of pure muscle come lunging at an unaware and barely 5-foot 17-year-old girl seems appalling and frightening. To take it a step further, by having someone see us fight it would seem downright violent, but what happened between us was the opposite of violent: it was healing. […]
HIS HANDS
THE SMART SET — MAY 17, 2021
The second entry in object essay series: Chikere Oduocha on her father’s hands.
One of my first interactions with hands was one I do not remember, the day I was born. Instead, I will tell my parent’s story, the story of two people welcoming their daughter into the world. Only seconds old, and barely eight pounds, I was passed hand to hand, from the doctor to my mother and finally to my father. At the touch of his hands, we connected: I was his Ada, his first daughter, the only girl he had ever wanted. In his hands, I lay still, quiet and peaceful as if his touch transferred a part of him into me. […]
THE PILLOW
THE SMART SET — June 3, 2021
And, finally, Emma Duffing on the loss of her grandfather, and the pillow’s comfort and support.
When I was little, about eight years old, I found comfort in body pillows. Sleeping next to one made me feel safe: no monsters could get to me while I slept. After my parents bought me my first body pillow, I decided I wanted more so that I could build a fortress in my bed and hide from all the unknown evils lurking in the shadows of my room. […]
SHAKESPEARE, SORT OF
In the spring of 2023, I collaborated with Thom Van Camp, an editor for Holding History, a public humanities program at UW–Madison, to develop and publish essays written by students for Joshua Calhoun’s Shakespeare course. My writers explored politicized adaptations of Brutus, the idea of beauty in the figure of Cleopatra, a transformative performance of Hostpur, and the death of Ophelia.
Costume design for Brutus, Alec Clunes. From Julius Caesar, The Folio Society, 1962.