Well folks, it has begun! My brain is beginning to switch from Out of School Mode to In School Mode. I can tell because I’m starting to contemplate the things that school inspired me to think about: creativity, literature, art, writing as a form of grief, writing/art/making as a manifestation of identity, writing/art as social activism, and on it goes. It’s not that I don’t think about these things outside of school, because I do. I’m a writer 100% of the time. But now I find myself thinking back on some of the books I read last year and how they shaped me as a writer, as a student of literature, and as a human.

Three writers who stand out heavily are Maggie Nelson, Renee Gladman, and Terese Marie Mailhot. I read Mailhot’s memoir Heart Berries last year and it filled me with things I understood and related to, and things I didn’t. One theme of that book is mental illness and how the narrator processes through childhood trauma. I suffer from often debilitating anxiety and depression and suicidal thoughts/tendencies. Reading Mailhot’s narrative of how living with mental illness impacted her life reiterated to me how important it is that 1) our society learns to do better by the people who live with mental health problems, and 2) we raise awareness about our struggles so that better understanding of different mental illnesses can be reached.

Maggie Nelson’s books The Argonauts and The Red Parts were two absolutely incredible books that hooked me from the first page and didn’t let go. The Argonauts is an inspiring, heart-wrenching account of how Nelson falls in love with an artist who is gender fluid, and chronicles the many stages of her pregnancy. It deals with issues of gender, sexuality, queerness, family, romance, desire – basically everything that my soul needs to feel tethered to people. It was an emotionally heavy read, but one that absolutely transformed me. I am tremendously passionate about LGBTQIA+ rights and issues, being bisexual myself, so it’s many themes hit very close to home.

Nelson’s book The Red Parts is an autobiography of Nelson’s experience going through the trial of the man who murdered her mom’s sister. I love courtroom movies and documentaries, so this truly incredible account of such a heavy trial was shattering. It poses so many questions about what makes us human, what connects us, and dissects the sometimes precarious nature of family units.

I bring these books up because, as each day inches me closer to grad school, I keep thinking about last year – about the closure of Marylhurst University, about the loss of some friendships and the gaining of others, about belonging and separation and our current political climate – so many things stir in my mind and in my body and I realize that I have so much to learn, so much to say, so much I want to do in this program, and these books remind me of where I could be as a writer at the end of it. I read other amazing books last year (Educated by Tara Westover, Bad Feminist by Roxanne Gay, The Year of Magical Thinking and Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion), all of which taught me things I would never have learned otherwise. All of them pointed inward at things inside of me that were still blooming, things that had begun to bloom and now lay dormant, and things that hadn’t yet bloomed at all.

This is what I’ll be walking into at PNCA. This is what I’ll be awakening inside of myself once again. It’s been one year (almost to the day) since I graduated with my B.A. in English Literature and Writing. In that time, I’ve grown. I’ve changed. I’ve thought and read and written and conversed. And now my brain is slouching toward higher education once again, the thing that has saved my life so many times. Right now I don’t feel like I need saving, necessarily. Right now I feel like I need to be transformed, and gods above, I hope this program will give me that chance.

Here’s to the next stage!