"I wanted to have the most interesting life possible. It felt scary. But it was in tune with having the widest lens, the biggest voice. I had a desire to see what is out there.” /web/aca_socialsciences_general/CT_November18_Adams_94x84.jpg

Our Alumni: Ellen Adams

M.F.A., 2013

I haven't sent you a postcard,
But I haven’' built up a wall either,
Across the Atlantic.
—Ellen Adams, “Across the Atlantic,” Live At Richardson (2010)

The lyrics from Ellen Adams' softly sung and reflective "Across the Atlantic" speak volumes about this 2013 graduate from the Brooklyn College M.F.A. program. Though Adams secured her degree in fiction under the tutelage of Joshua Henkin, Jenny Offill, and Ernesto Mestre-Reed, she is accomplished in many genres and many media. A talented, Seattle-based author and singer-songwriter, Adams literally migrates through the world and through art forms without the impediment of walls. She received the Lainoff Prize for Fiction the year she graduated from Brooklyn College and one year later the Southwest Review's McGinnis-Ritchie Award for Fiction. Regardless of her clear ability to make up a good story, Adams has also been acknowledged for her nonfiction writing as the recipient of a 2017 Ploughshares' Emerging Writer prize. With so much to show as a writer, nonetheless, Adams looked to bridge the gap to the visuals arts. Months before her graduation from Brooklyn College, she applied for and was awarded a Fulbright Full Research Grant to study politically engaged contemporary art in Thailand in 2013.

In the text Ellen Adams wrote to accompany Thai artist Rikrit Tiravanija's exhibit No Dining Together, she says, “Who really holds the authority to delineate, divide, or open the spaces and experience of art?” Similarly, looking for a wide breadth of experiences, and not feeling confined by the barriers of place and practice has defined Adams' life. She is fluent in French and Spanish and proficient in Thai, and so with these tools this explorer, observer, and writer has clocked months, if not years, living where her native English is not the first language. "My life choices, to live in different time zones… I wanted to have the most interesting life possible. It felt scary. But it was in tune with having the widest lens, the biggest voice. I had a desire to see what is out there," says Adams.

Although she has lived around the world and now calls the West Coast home, Adams misses Brooklyn and all of New York City. "I underestimated how hard it would be to find the same kind of energetic arts community after moving to Seattle,” she says. She has nothing but praise for the writing community she found at Brooklyn College. Adams sensed "camaraderie rather than competition" as the defining qualities of the Brooklyn College M.F.A. program when she chose to pursue her degree at the college nearly a decade ago. Looking back at her choice now, she comments, "I am happier and even relieved I made that choice." She asserts that the program looked at the character of the applicants and considered how each writer, as an individual, would contribute to the make-up of the cohort.

One lesson Adams has taken away from the M.F.A. program is the necessity for the writing group to focus its comments on the work and not the writer. Workshop leaders, for example, would demand, "What page is that on?" when a student offered a critique. This helped to thicken the skin without crippling the author's ego. Even now Adams turns to writers from her Brooklyn College cohort as trusted readers. Their feedback has been tremendously valuable as Adams prepares to send a first novel out to publishers and works through the early stages of a major work of nonfiction.

Despite Adams' clear record of success, she shares her rejection letters with an undergraduate and aspiring writer she mentors. "She needs to know that rejection is part of the practice," says Adams. Adams is grateful, though, for the successes, in particular the fellowships and grants that have enabled her to devote herself to her writing full time. "I was working in a cubicle for four years, but now I can sit at my desk and write. When I am writing I don't think about the prizes. I spend a lot of time on revision and revision is unglamorous. Endless hard work, but the hard work is the elbow grease that lets me apply for these grants."

Adams will even give credit to her day jobs, working with spreadsheets and meeting deadlines, as helping with some of the practicalities of her writing work. She has come to recognize that it is "okay to be practical about hustling your work." A course in the Artist Trust Art Business Night School enables her to "skip beers with friends on a Friday night in order to finish up a grant application." And yet, with each grant application she writes, she speaks of her gratitude toward Brooklyn College and Ellen Tremper, who so generously gave of her time to review Adams' original Fulbright application. Adams credits Tremper with giving her "nuggets of truth you can hang on to for life."

Her own advice for anyone considering getting an M.F.A.? Ellen Adams says, "Look at Brooklyn College! Even if you don't get the good news [an acceptance], still stick with the writing." As one of her teachers once told her, "Every time you write you develop. Keep writing."

Back to Critical Thinking — November 2018