Nonfiction Roundtable: The Community We’ve Found

By Rachel Barton

The Nonfiction section of NYU’s MFA program welcomed its inaugural cohort in fall of 2019 and the second cohort of Nonfiction students started their journey in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the Nonfiction Roundtable series, students from both cohorts come together to talk through the experience and, more broadly, what it’s like to study nonfiction at NYU’s MFA program. This installment features Lauren Lowe and Marissa Perino, both second-years, as well as Will Goodwin, a first-year. 

Washington Square Review (WSR): I want to take it way back— further back for some of us than others—to when you were looking at programs. Were you always looking at nonfiction specifically or was that something that you came across in the process?

Marissa Perino (MP): I looked at both poetry and nonfiction programs. There were fewer nonfiction programs than poetry and fiction. I gathered my list of schools that I was interested in, and if they had both, I applied to nonfiction. For schools that I was still interested in, depending on the staff or just the location, I applied for poetry. It made sense because a lot of my work was prose and could kind of be counted as both.

WSR: That does make sense for you, especially. Do you want to talk a little about what you write?

MP: I realized after applying to MFA programs that my poetry was just prose and it was all true. It was completely nonfiction. I came into the program saying I was going to write about circuses. Someone in workshop told me it's all about preservation and I believe her. I’m preserving stories told to me by my grandmother, things about the Midwest, place. They come out in these separate, fragmented essays that hopefully will one day be pieced together.

Lauren Lowe (LL): The circus, animals, insects, Americana, decay, class. There’s a lot in there. 

WSR: And childhood, I think. You’re preserving that time period and the feeling of it.

MP: Yeah, I’m writing through my experiences, which, up until now, have been very rooted in childhood.

WSR: What about you, Lauren? 

LL: Gosh, it was a long time ago. I can't write poetry well and I didn't have a strong desire to pursue fiction, so I was looking specifically at nonfiction programs. I’m remembering, like Marissa mentioned, having to check, saying, “Oh, I'm interested in this program,” and then not seeing the nonfiction concentration. I had also been looking at a few more interdisciplinary ones that incorporated image with text. It's funny because I remember always wanting to apply to NYU. I don't care how lame that sounds; that's the truth. Over the summer in 2018, when I was looking, they didn't have the nonfiction program announced yet. Around October, I was checking again and it just so happened that they were introducing it on the front page. 

WSR: What were you working on? What made you look at nonfiction in the first place?

LL: What was I working on? In some ways, I feel like the answer is, I was figuring out what I was working on. But that's still a cop out, so I won't stop there. I’m writing a book that continues to change shape constantly. I write a lot about place: particularly Philadelphia right now, and the differing communities of Chinatown on the East side of the city and West Philadelphia, which is a historically black community obviously on the West side of the city.

With that, I write a lot about being biracial, being half-Chinese and half-white. There’s stuff about being queer, too, so it’s a lot about belonging—yearning, I’ve been told, is also a theme. I think I'm really interested in the architecture of home. Not just in our own personal abodes, but also the larger world. Some feeling  in me goes back to this very primal need to be able to feel at home in places. Part of that, of course, is housing and I'm working on talking about architecture—a lot of that has to do with windows in this current moment. I have a very serious fixation on windows and light and intimacy and relation. 

Will Goodwin (WG): Living without a window will really ruin your life. Once, I lived in a room that had a window facing a brick wall. I don’t know which is worse. 

I was only ever looking at nonfiction. I don't have whatever that bone or lobe in your brain is for poetry. It's just not there. And I’ve never really felt any kind of passion for making something up entirely. I've never really been a “writer”, but I decided to pursue this kind of degree and program two weeks before I applied everywhere. I didn’t have a long process thinking it out. I based it all around where I wanted to be and where was going to give me enough money. It was more practical. 

WSR: You mentioned you wouldn't want to write fiction because you don't want to make something up entirely. Having read your nonfiction, I think you could absolutely package that to someone as fiction. What do you guys think nonfiction is? What are its boundaries? Does it even have any?

WG: It’s a younger discipline in some ways. It’s annoying that people call it a genre because it isn’t. Just like fiction isn't a genre. If somebody asked you what kind of book you're reading right now, you would describe it. You wouldn’t say, “Oh, it's fiction.” They'd tell you to shut up. That doesn't make sense and how that's not how human beings talk. I don’t think I want to pursue nonfiction so much as the subjects I want to work on just happen to be close to whatever reality means. 

I am someone with a lot of demands of the world and zero leverage, so I'm trying to figure out how to make art useful in some way. I’m writing about political violence and my experience working in a job that was, like, so clearly in service of evil. I’m working on fighting this complete illusion that you can actually affect specific change on purpose. There’s also a lot about divination and astral projection. 

LL: I wish we were in a workshop together! I’d love to read that. We have to share with one another because it’s a disservice not to. 

WSR: We can all share though. That’s what makes talking about the “genre boundary” so exciting. We’re all influencing each other at once. Marissa, since you write poetry, does that boundary look different for you?

MP: In undergrad, I was exposed to genre bending all the time, so it didn't seem strange to me to incorporate poetry in my prose. 

LL: Sometimes I wonder why we even talk about genre. I understand having parameters and I do feel, at this moment in time, like a “nonfiction writer.” But something happened over the course of the year and a half I’ve been in the program. I’m thinking of Ken Chen’s class on hybrid texts, which we all took, and it  was really interesting to me. I think the program has completely opened up the idea of what's possible for all of us.

We did an informal summer workshop and Marissa was part of a team that submitted a collaborative writing piece that opened with a cast of characters, had a screenplay in the middle of it, and ended with a song. I don't think any of us would've seen somebody submitting that in our first time here together. 

WG: I think the genre issue only comes up because you can't divorce any of this from commerce. None of this pays bills. If there was no aspect of marketing or the publishing industry involved, genre wouldn't be a question. 

WSR: There are professors who separate us from that as much as possible, especially in workshops. They emphasize that these two years are for us to cultivate ourselves. Nothing else matters. Workshop is about what you're making for yourself and for each other.

MP: Even when they have a lot of editorial experience, I think they still make that distinction. Meghan O’Rourke’s workshop was like that. She made the space for us, but also offered to talk about pitches and agents when we were ready. 

LL: She was very forthcoming about how long these projects actually take and what revision looks like. It was so freeing. 

WSR: It’s been really special getting to know faculty. I think the size of the program plays a part in that. It’s  pretty small, which is intrinsic to it being so new. 

MP: Our experience last year, as the first people in the program, was very rare and wonderful. I do think it's great to have the first years, to have new voices. Ideally, a workshop would involve  both groups. I'll have some people I don't need to explain myself to and there'll be fresh eyes and people who have tons of questions. 

LL: I don't know anything about [NYU’s] plans for growing  the nonfiction program. It might be a bit of who I am as a person, but I think it's really incredible how much becomes capable between people when you have like this long arc of a relationship together. I will say, there are definitely times where I feel like you guys know me too well. 

WSR: Our experience is really special. We know almost everyone in nonfiction. In a different focus or program, you wouldn’t get to know most of the students. 

MP: And it’s not competitive. There isn't a comparison going on. There’s just thinking of each other, what we might say, what we might pick up on. It’s insight. 

LL: If we want to describe what writing is like here, it only makes sense for it to be communal. Living is communal and collaborative, and I think writing is so closely tied to living and sharing our stories and learning to understand others. There are so many conversations we have that inform submissions, even if they aren’t specifically about the work. Even the one-to-one individual relationships are melded into the workshop experience.

WSR: And that may actually be a way that Will’s experience differs, since he started in the fall of 2020.

WG: Yeah, trying to learn from my bedroom, here in the city that I moved to specifically for the experiences it could offer, itfeels very dumb. Like a computer error. I’m going part-time this semester to elongate the process because I want to catch it up to what my expectations were. Based on what you’re saying, I think my expectations were accurate. I've made a concerted effort to collaborate with people. It's been easier with new people, people who were on my same timeline. We were all in this weird place. 

Personally, I don't think well alone. I need people around me all the time. Part of what I wanted was hanging out in the Writers House, meeting people, being able to do stuff after class. I do feel like I'm getting smarter as it goes on, because it is still school. And this is still, like, more valuable than pretty much all of undergrad was. But it’s hard to have it so structured during a time when we try and develop artistically. I can't always turn my brain to max capacity during those moments. In person, you know, it's easier to be awake and alert. 

LL: You know, with how much of our time now is really structured, it's kind of incredible to me how much of the discussion itself has not necessarily changed. It’s still very rigorous, if not more so. I still feel like I'm learning a lot and I'm getting really good feedback. But it’s the smaller stuff I’m missing. Like making eye contact with someone when something funny happens. I miss that from regular life, too. 

We used to have these moments together. Like KGB readings, which are probably amongst the things that I miss the most during the pandemic. A bunch of us would go to MoMA together, and I think that kind of time is so important. Looking at art with your friends. 

So part of the reason why, when you're talking about going part-time, it's not just for the instruction, but for everything else. All of those experiences are brought back into the room, into the workshop. It could be specific things said, but the trust was the most important part.