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Colleen O’Connor is a second-year graduate student in the Nonfiction program. She is an exquisite writer, someone who makes even the most disgusting, dirty things seem beautiful in her writing. I am personally obsessed with her lyric essay (maybe prose poem, but who cares about genre-distinction, right?) series in which she imagines herself to be Orson Welles’ lover. This is one of the first pieces Colleen submitted for workshop, and I have had the chance to watch it grow and to experience the mind of a writer who is fully content embracing the imagined in work that is traditionally supposed to be “true.” We discuss “truth” in Nonfiction in our workshops often, and I am bored by the subject. We are writers and we may be writing about true events, but we are still allowed a certain amount of craft in our collection of facts. Colleen knows the facts about Welles, and she presses herself against them (quite literally in one imagined scene with Welles). What impresses me, what captivates me and keeps me reading Colleen’s work is her aversion to what she should be doing. She does what she wants and she does it incredibly well.

Colleen’s poetry can be found in PANK, Everyday Genius, and Columbia Poetry Review. She took the time, during these last busy weeks of the semester (finals, final papers, grading papers, etc., etc., etc.) to answer a few questions:

1. Where are you from?

I am from Glen Ellyn, Illinois, which is about twenty-five miles outside of Chicago. It’s actually a pretty boring place. The most interesting thing I can say about it is that the movie Lucas was filmed there in the 80s, or that someone dug up a mastodon skeleton there sometime in the 60s, I think. Other than that, it’s another run-of-the-mill Chicago suburb.

My mom still lives there in the same house I grew up in, which is sort of nice. Regardless of how cynical I try to be about where I grew up (What’s that Hemingway quote? “Wide lawns, narrow minds”?), I still like going home and sitting in the same living room I did when I was younger.

Going to school so close to home is, nice, but it’s also its own pain. I’ve never lived more than thirty miles away from my hometown, and as a result I am generally pretty available to my family, who mean the world to me, but are, well, family.

2. Why did you chose to apply to Columbia?

I chose Columbia because of David Lazar, mainly. I studied poetry here before starting the Nonfiction MFA, and was lucky enough to take a prose poetry class with David. I loved his workshop method, the way he challenged my writing, and the way he can give a reading recommendation in a nanosecond. I was also super excited to have the chance to work with Aviya and Jenny. The faculty here is really open to all different types of nonfiction–lyric essay, essay-essay, and everything in between. I deeply admire and respect all of their work and teaching methods.

But the school itself is also fantastic. I love that my students (Colleen is a Graduate Student Instructor of Writing and Rhetoric) are artists, and that I can walk around campus and see, often in one day, briefcases and unicycles and mohawks and beat boxing. It’s probably cliché to remark on the school’s diversity, but it is palpable. I feel lucky every time I walk into 33 E Congress.

3. Name five of your favorite books.

There are so many books I feel like I can’t live without! This list is subject to change:

1. Pink Steam by Dodie Bellamy–This book taught me a new way to think about nonfiction, about memoir and about storytelling in general. I have grown to adore Dodie Bellamy and everything she writes, but this book was my way into her starkly honest and beautifully written world.
2. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson–I am not the most discerning fiction reader, but this novel is my absolute favorite. It’s the first time I really understood subtlety in writing — Something I am so far from in my own work but starting to reach toward in my own pathetic little way.
3. Ariel by Sylvia Plath — Yes, I was one of those girls in junior high who discovered Plath and fell deeply, deeply in love. But even after all these years, this book resonates with me. Her word choices (among other things) are still surprising. It’s hard not to be impacted by her work.
4. Green Girl by Kate Zambreno — Kate is a former professor of mine, and one of my absolute favorite writers. Her newest novel is unbearably effective — It speaks to the insecure girl in me in ways that are all-at-once mortifying, devastating, and hilarious.
5. Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing by Helene Cixous — David Lazar introduced this book to me in his History of the Essay class. The way Cixous talks about writing and what writing is and how we do it, how it is actually physical, is one of the most exciting, challenging, and inspiring views of the craft I have ever read.

4. Tell me about a current project that you are working on.

I am currently working on two main projects. One is a series of essay-essays about my wedding. I got married in June and am trying to get to the bottom of some of that stuff — Why I got married; why I made the choices I made; why I care to write about it at all. It is the first time I have focused on writing straight-up prose for pages at a time. I generally fragment what I write, or break it up into parts, or rely on the lyric. With this project, I’m trying to just write the things I want to say. I’m trying to ask more questions and write in full sentences and paragraphs. It sounds simple enough, and actually pretty lame, but it has been challenging and exciting for me to work on.

I am also working on a more lyric piece about Joan Vollmer Burroughs (common-law wife of William S. Burroughs). I have been obsessed with this woman for about a decade now, and cannot stop writing about her. This project is kind of a meditation on her life, on addiction, on madness and all of that.

5. What is your most memorable moment, thus far, during your time in the Nonfiction MFA program?

I would have to say that my most memorable experience so far has been the amazing friendships I’ve been able to build, but I feel like I should be more specific. In terms of school-academic-y stuff, I’d have to say my most memorable experience so far is the Q & A we had with Maggie Nelson. We read Bluets in Jenny Boully’s workshop, and I fell madly in love with it. Having the opportunity to sit with her and ask questions, and listening to her discuss her work and her process was amazing.

My most memorable outside-of-class-y moment (though it is incredibly hard to pick just one) would probably be dancing with Jenn at a bar in Wicker Park before we realized we had a crowd watching us. That moment is branded on my brain forever, I think, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.