Harvardwood HIGHLIGHTS - April 2025
- Apr 3
- 21 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
In this issue:
MESSAGE FROM HARVARDWOOD
NEWS
Virtual Harvardwood 101 — Applications Open This Wednesday!
Harvardwood Summer Internship Program (HSIP) 2025
Seeking Homestay Hosts for HSIP 2025
Looking for Class of 2025 Commencement Marshals on Thursday, May 29
Featured Job: Administrative Assistant, Film Strategy
FEATURES
Harvardwood Profile: Nick Gordon AB '95 (producer)
Industry News
Welcome New Members
Exclusive Q&A with Dawn Tripp AB '90 (author)
CALENDAR & NOTES
Empowering Voices: A Conversation with Sue Guiney of Writing Through
Last Month at Harvardwood
Want to submit your success(es) to Harvardwood HIGHLIGHTS? Do so by posting here!
Many April Fools to those who partake.
With a bio-weapon level of pollen comes a more welcome waft of Harvardwood news: Virtual Harvardwood 101 applications open soon, along with the Harvardwood Summer Internship Program 2025. And with it comes our yearly supplication Seeking Homestay Hosts for HSIP 2025 -- pretty please?
In other monthly notes, come talk to Sue Guiney, Founder of Writing Through about the power of creative writing. Or hey, be a Class of 2025 Commencement Marshal! No such thing as a free lunch, but I do believe they provide lunch.
As always, if you have an idea for an event or programming, please tell us about it here. If you have an announcement about your work or someone else's, please share it here (members) and it will appear in our Weekly and/or next HIGHLIGHTS issue.
Best wishes,
Grace Shi
Operations and Communications
Virtual Harvardwood 101 - Applications Open this Wednesday!
The Virtual Harvardwood 101 applications for 2025 will open this Wednesday, April 9. This program is for any current Harvard undergrads and graduate students.
Virtual Harvardwood 101 is an intensive, informal three days featuring a dozen events via Zoom, including industry speakers, panels with interactive sessions, student Q&As, workshops, and more! Participants in past years include Amazon Studios, BMG Music Group, CAA, HBO Max, Netflix, Spotify, United Masters, Upland Workshop, UTA, WME, and more!
Students who have completed the virtual or in-person Harvardwood 101 programs in the past are eligible to participate again. More info and application HERE.
Harvardwood Summer Internship Program (HSIP) 2025
Now in its 22nd year, the Harvardwood Summer Internship Program (HSIP) provides a list of summer internship opportunities in the arts, media, and entertainment to interested Harvard students. In addition, HSIP facilitates career-related activities throughout the summer for participating students and companies virtually and/or in-person in LA, NY, and other cities with multiple students. Past program events have included film screenings, industry panels, and networking pool parties.
Internship opportunities are released and applications are accepted on a rolling basis. Positions may be filled on a first-come, first-served basis, so we encourage students and companies to submit their materials as early as possible.
For more information, visit the HSIP page.
Seeking Homestay Hosts for HSIP 2025
Every year, our Harvardwood Summer Internship Program (HSIP) offers a few dozen Harvard College students the opportunity to pursue summer internships in the arts, media, and entertainment sectors. HSIP facilitates career-related activities throughout the summer for participating students and companies both virtually and in-person in Los Angeles and other cities with multiple students.
We are currently looking for homestay hosts for part or all of Summer 2025 in LA, NYC, and other large cities to help defray the cost of living for students, many of whom could otherwise not afford to participate in low-paying arts/entertainment internships. If you're able to provide a spare room/couch/air mattress to host a college student (or three!) we'd be eternally grateful.
Please contact Programs Director Laura Yumi Snell at programs@harvardwood.org with your name, address/neighborhood, and the number of students and dates you're able to host. Thank you!
Looking for Class of 2025 Commencement Marshals on Thursday, May 29
On behalf of Harvard's Committee for the Happy Observance of Commencement, we are thrilled to invite you to play a significant role as an alumni marshal at Commencement for the Class of 2025 on Thursday, May 29. This year, there will be a record number of graduates at Commencement—about 11,000 because of COVID deferrals.
Location: Harvard Yard
Arrival: 6:30-8:00 AM depending on your assignment
Responsibilities: Welcome guests at the gates, direct families and guests to their seats, and ensure clear pathways for academic processions.
Event Duration: Commencement Exercises begin at 9:30 AM and conclude around noon, with a celebratory luncheon for volunteers to follow.
Featured Job: Administrative Assistant, Film Strategy
Job Description:
The Film Strategy and Business Development department is a highly visible group that works closely with senior executive management across NBCUniversal and Comcast. The group works in conjunction with other business units within Universal Filmed Entertainment on a wide range of strategic initiatives including evaluating potential acquisitions, reviewing worldwide windowing and distribution strategies, and exploring new business opportunities.
Alumni Profile: Nick Gordon AB '95 (producer)
by Laura Frustaci AB '21
Nick Gordon AB '95 is an Oscar-nominated and Golden Globe-winning film producer and the president of independent production & finance company Brookstreet Pictures. Previously, Nick was Brookstreet’s Chief Operating Officer for four years and before that Head of Development, a role in which he oversaw the acquisition of new material and building of the company slate. His producing credits include: MR. BURTON (Executive Producer); THE BRUTALIST; KNOX GOES AWAY; THE FORGIVEN; BROTHERS BY BLOOD; SKIN (Executive Producer); O.G.; FIRST KILL (writer & co-producer); and GIRLHOUSE (writer & producer). Before joining the company in 2010, Nick worked as a screenwriter and documentary story consultant. He was the sole writer on BEHIND THE MASKS: THE STORY OF THE SCREEN ACTORS GUILD, a four-part documentary miniseries chronicling the history of Hollywood’s most famous labor union. Nick was a founding employee of HotJobs, an industry leading employment website purchased by Yahoo! in 2000. Nick is an honors graduate of Harvard College. He was born in Boston and grew up in both Cambridge, MA and Santa Cruz, CA.
Nick Gordon AB '95 started his career in entertainment as a theater kid, taking every available drama class at Harvard and even studying screenwriting under Spike Lee. Though acting and writing were his initial ambitions, life took an unexpected turn after graduation. When his father passed away, Nick chose to stay on the East Coast rather than move to Los Angeles to pursue Hollywood. Instead, he landed in New York and found himself in the tech industry, working as a headhunter and eventually becoming one of the founding employees at HotJobs, a pioneering job board that was later sold to Yahoo for $350 million. “It was a nice windfall for folks,” he reminisces. But despite his success, Nick still felt the pull of creativity.
By 1999, Nick made the leap to Los Angeles, with an initial focus on screenwriting. He had several scripts optioned and two produced, while also working on documentary projects, including writing a four-part documentary miniseries on the Screen Actors Guild. But his career took a real turn in 2010 when he met Trevor Matthews, a filmmaker who was looking to expand his production company, Brookstreet Pictures.
“He hired me to write a couple of movies for him,” Nick explains. “But I could see that he was missing someone on the development side, helping him build his slate.” With experience absorbed from his wife, Alison Haskovec '01, a well-respected development executive, Nick saw an opportunity. He pitched himself as Brookstreet’s new head of development, and Trevor agreed. The two started with low-budget horror films before realizing their true passion lay in prestige dramas. “We both aspired to make important, character-driven films,” Nick says. That vision led to a shift in Brookstreet’s focus—one that would eventually position the company as a powerhouse in independent cinema, evidenced by their role in producing this season’s critically acclaimed THE BRUTALIST.
When asked what it takes to make a Golden Globe-winning and Oscar-nominated movie, Nick is quick to brush off the notion that there’s a formula. “It takes a lot of guts, a lot of conviction. You have to trust your own taste.” With THE BRUTALIST, that trust paid off. While many in Hollywood doubted that such a film could be made in today’s indie landscape, Nick and his team saw its potential. “Most people in town were wary of it. They said, ‘You can’t make a movie like this without losing all your money.’ We felt otherwise.” For Nick, the combination of Writer/Director Brady Corbet’s vision and an all-star cast, including Adrien Brody, Guy Pearce, Felicity Jones, and Joe Alwyn, made it clear they had something special. “When that level of talent is coming out to play, you owe it to them to do this properly,” he says. “You're peeling back the layers all the time, examining everything a hundred times over to make sure that you can really pull this off at that budget level… The execution that we managed to achieve is very faithful to Brady's vision.”
Gordon first read the script in the spring of 2020 and knew right away that it was unlike anything else in the indie space. “It was a fully formed, superbly-written screenplay,” Nick says. “Normally, when you come on as a producer, you’re looking to trim the fat, find things that might not work or might not be necessary, especially in the indie space where budget constraints come into play. You might say, ‘Well, we just can’t afford four car chases. Can we do one?’ But this was an impeccably developed character-driven drama, and there was virtually nothing to change.”
The biggest challenge, he explains, was figuring out how to portray the film’s titular Brutalist building, a crucial architectural element, in a believable way. Beyond that, the team had to determine the right location to bring Corbet’s 1950s-set vision to life. “Unfortunately, shooting indies at this level in America has become really tough,” Nick says. “I wish there were better soft money incentives in the States. Yes, certain places have tax credits, and those are helpful, but on balance, it’s more expensive to make indies here.” The production ultimately landed in Hungary, where a mix of experienced crew members, a strong cinephile culture, and financial incentives made it the ideal location. “There are a lot of big studio projects shooting in Hungary, but also a lot of indies, so the crews are really experienced,” Nick explains. “They know the difference between what you have to do on a smaller film versus a bigger film. And they also have their own rich history of homegrown Eastern European cinema, so they have great taste and a real respect for the medium.”
Once they were set with Hungary, the next big question was how to create the monumental edifice that main character László Tóth (played by Adrien Brody) is working on. Nick lets us in on the secret. “Judy Becker, our production designer. She's a genius,” Nick smiles. “She has a long love and passion for architecture, and really went above and beyond to study for the task before her… She did a masterful job with that. Quite a bit of that is VFX, of course, but we would also build the bare minimum practical things on set. You can achieve a lot with scaffolding and with tarps, shovels, and piles of dirt and pieces of cement.” That’s movie magic, folks!
One of the most gratifying aspects of THE BRUTALIST’s success, Nick says, was seeing audiences embrace “real cinema.” He recalls how many people thanked Brady Corbet, Mona Fastvold, the producers, and the actors for "fighting for real cinema," a sentiment that underscored how starved audiences are for films like this. “It is crazy that the studios don’t do more of this,” Nick says, hoping they take a lesson from its reception. He emphasizes that making space for artistic, intellectually and emotionally engaging films doesn’t mean abandoning blockbusters: “You don’t have to stop seeing Marvel movies or stop making them. Just create a bit more room for stories like this.” The film’s intermission became a key part of that experience, turning screenings into communal events. “People would come out halfway through, talk about it, get excited for the second half, and then count down together as the film resumed. It was all because of a $10 million indie, not a $200 million studio film.”
Moving forward, Nick plans to continue doing exactly what he has been doing: supporting low-budget indie films and filmmakers with a vision and welcoming big names looking to take on challenging, meaningful stories.“Tell all your movie star friends that if they’ve got a passion project or an indie they want to make, they should come to Brookstreet,” Nick says with a grin. The company has a packed slate ahead, including a secretive short film with an A-lister and John Michael McDonagh’s next project, a 1970s-inspired Australian horror film set to shoot in June and July. And Brookstreet’s next film, MR. BURTON, a coming-of-age biopic about the young Richard Burton, starring Toby Jones, Lesley Manville, and rising star Harry Lawtey, will be released later this year.
When asked what he had to say to those looking to follow in his producer footsteps, he acknowledged, "This is an impossibly difficult industry, and it does attract some challenging people." However, "If this is your passion, if this is your dream, if you have to do it, be a good person first and foremost. Have a strong moral compass, be respectful, and treat people well." He emphasizes the importance of patience and humility, cautioning against coming in thinking you know everything: "Being intelligent and having an abstract or theoretical grasp of something is not the same as understanding how things work in this business. You have to find good mentors, work hard, and pay your dues." He adds, "You're constantly paying it forward and trusting the process."
Industry News
Courtney B. Vance AB '82 has announced his candidacy to join the Harvard Board of Overseers, one of Harvard’s two governing boards, for which voting has opened. If elected, Courtney intends to be a strong advocate for Harvard artists across disciplines. In Harvard Magazine’s recent questionnaire for Overseer candidates, Courtney states that “the Overseers' role is ensuring that Harvard remains true to its core values.” He adds, "Communicating person-to-person is what I am all about. Having a long, productive career in the business-of-show has prepared me to contribute in a meaningful and impactful way. Why? Because connecting with people, consensus building, and the lost art of listening, are the little things that will help us reconnect and reposition ourselves at home and abroad." If you'd like to learn more about Courtney and his campaign, please explore this document.
Former FilmNation exec Milan Popelka AB '01 has joined LuckyChap as a partner, joining the company’s current partners Tom Ackerley, Josey McNamara, and Margot Robbie. Popelka’s impressive career includes serving as executive producer on many acclaimed projects, including Academy Award Best Picture winner ANORA and nominee CONCLAVE. (Deadline)
Gerry Bryant AB '74 received a Silver Medal for Outstanding Achievement from the Global Music Awards for his album THE COMPOSERS: VOLUME 2. The album, released by Navona Records, celebrates the works of historically overlooked Black classical composers and furthers Bryant’s mission to spotlight their lasting contributions to classical music. (Parma Recordings)
The live-action LILO & STITCH, produced by Jonathan Eirich AB '03 and Dan Lin AB '99 and starring Courtney B. Vance AB '82, is already building major excitement ahead of its May 2025 release. The first trailer racked up millions of views, giving audiences a glimpse of the heartwarming and adventurous reimagining of the beloved Disney classic film. (Deadline)
Conan O’Brien AB '85, the beloved comedian, writer, and producer who hosted the 97th Oscars telecast on March 2, has agreed to return and host the 98th Oscars telecast on March 15, 2026, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Monday. (The Hollywood Reporter)
Everything Theatre praised the Arcola Theatre’s production of CRYBABY: THE MUSICAL, highlighting its sharp humor, energetic performances, and catchy score by David Javerbaum AB '93 and Adam Schlesinger. The review notes that the musical’s witty songs and fast-paced satire bring a refreshing edge to this 1950s parody. (Everything Theatre)
Playbill spotlights Bess Wohl AB '96 and her new Off-Broadway play LIBERATION, which explores feminism, activism, and intergenerational dialogue. Inspired by her mother’s work at MS. magazine, Wohl’s LIBERATION has been praised for its powerful portrayal of women’s consciousness-raising groups in the 1970s and its timely reflection on ongoing struggles for equality. (Playbill)
Tom Morello AB '86 will serve as musical director for Black Sabbath’s final-ever show, BACK TO THE BEGINNING, on July 5, 2025. Morello called it an honor to help reunite the original band members for this historic farewell concert. (NME)
Michael Rosenberg AB '82, president of Film Movement, is overseeing the 4K restoration and re-release of the Masayuki Suô’s 1996 box office hit SHALL WE DANCE to showcase the uncut version never before available in North America. (Variety)
Robert Carlock AB '95, is co-writing and executive producing an upcoming NBC comedy pilot featuring Tracy Morgan as a disgraced former football player aiming to rehabilitate his image. Daniel Radcliffe has joined the cast as Arthur Tobin, an award-winning filmmaker documenting Morgan’s character. The project reunites Carlock with fellow 30 ROCK collaborators Tina Fey and Sam Means. (Deadline)
Reginald Hudlin AB '83 directed and executive produced NUMBER ONE ON THE CALL SHEET, a two-part documentary film event celebrating the achievements of Black leading men and women in Hollywood. The project, produced alongside Jamie Foxx and others, had its star-studded premiere in Los Angeles and debuted globally on Apple TV+ on March 28. (Apple)
Darren Aronofsky AB '91, is set to direct a new adaptation of Stephen King’s CUJO. This marks Aronofsky’s first venture into directing a Stephen King project. The film is slated to begin production later this year. (The Hollywood Reporter)
Chloe Saracco AB '21 will be performing at the 2025 Olivier Awards at the Royal Albert Hall with the UK premiere cast of NATASHA, PIERRE & THE GREAT COMET OF 1812, which earned six Olivier nominations. The ceremony will be broadcast on Sunday, April 6th. (ITV)
R.J. Cutler AB '83 directed FIGHT FOR GLORY: 2024 WORLD SERIES, a new three-part documentary premiering March 28 on Apple TV+. The series gives an all-access, cinematic look at the intense Yankees-Dodgers showdown and the drama of baseball’s biggest stage. (Apple)
Marshall Lewy AB '96, serves as an executive producer on DYING FOR SEX, FX’s new limited series starring Michelle Williams and Jenny Slate. Inspired by a true story and podcast, the series premiered April 4 exclusively on Disney+. (Disney)
Jonathan Steinberg AB '99 is in discussions to co-write and executive produce a new live-action POWER RANGERS series for Disney+. Steinberg, known for his work on PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLYMPIANS, is collaborating with Dan Shotz on this project, aiming to reinvent the iconic franchise for a new generation. (TV Line)
John Lesher AB '88 is producing the upcoming MEET THE PARENTS sequel for Universal, with original cast members like Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro expected to return. The new installment will continue the story of Greg Focker and his hilariously complicated family. (The Hollywood Reporter)
Comedian Kiran Deol AB has announced that her debut special, JOYSUCK, is set to premiere via Comedy Dynamics on Tuesday, April 8th. Between the pandemic, inflation, and our era’s crazy politics, the comedian offers an alternative: find the JOY, despite the SUCK. (Deadline)
Welcome New Members
Harvardwood warmly welcomes all members who joined the organization or renewed their membership last month:
Spence Neumann
Bianca Turetsky
Gina Hackett
Kalia Firester
Charlie Paradis
Eve Howe
Tobias Lederberg
Exclusive Q&A with Dawn Tripp AB '90 (author)
Dawn Tripp AB '90 is the nationally bestselling author of the novels JACKIE and GEORGIA, finalist for the New England Book Award, and winner of the Mary Lynn Kotz Award for Art in Literature. Praised by THE WASHINGTON POST, THE BOSTON GLOBE, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, and others, JACKIE is described by author Chris Bohjalian as a “brilliant, beautiful book that touches the soul in ways conventional biographies can’t.” Tripp is the author of three previous novels: GAME OF SECRETS, MOON TIDE, and THE SEASON OF OPEN WATER, which won the Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction. Her poems and essays have appeared in the VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW, HARVARD REVIEW, CONJUNCTIONS, AGNI, and NPR. She serves on the executive board of the Boston Book Festival and on the board of Gnome Surf: A non-profit surf therapy organization focused on creating a culture shift towards kindness, love, and acceptance for athletes of all abilities. She graduated from Harvard and lives in Massachusetts with her sons.
Q: Your novel JACKIE offers a unique, intimate portrayal of Jacqueline Kennedy. What drew you to her story, and how did you approach writing a novel rather than a traditional biography?
I came to Jackie’s story through a photograph. It’s not a well-known image, but to me it was striking. A black and white photograph of Jackie and Jack, June 1957, in the doorway of an airport. Her back is to the camera, her skirt filled with wind, a triple strand of pearls around her neck. She is standing with Jack in a doorway. He leans toward her, perhaps to say something, perhaps to kiss her goodbye. It fascinated me – that photograph and the intimacy captured between these two young people. It was clear they had little idea they were being photographed. The moment was private, a faint tension between them, a stiltedness or longing held in check, something said or left unsaid and, as well, a vulnerability, a tenderness. I found it a moment of heartbreaking beauty, a leave-taking. Jack might have been setting off on a campaign trip. Jackie was pregnant by then with Caroline. I studied this photograph, and to me, it was like fire. Over the next few days, I wrote several different passages about it, longhand, both from Jack’s and Jackie’s perspective. In the book, they each remember that moment years later, and it matters to each of them for different reasons, and in different ways.
I became intrigued with this idea of who Jackie was, who Jack and Jackie were together–before they were myth. When they were just two people, not well known–young, newly married, with all the incipient joys and thorns that come in a complex love affair. Who were those two people? As people? Who was she? I printed out that image of Jackie and Jack in the door of the airport, their bodies in shadow, their faces close, the bright fast rush of the white sky behind. The tentative intimacy became the heart of the story.
Q: JACKIE has received praise for its emotional depth and lyrical style. How do you navigate crafting language that resonates while keeping the narrative compelling?
Spare language with a strong cadence can, along with plot, propel a reader through a story. Longer sentences suddenly disrupted by a single word, a short phrase, or a sudden shift in pace can heighten suspense. I’m always fascinated to notice how precise and resonant language can pierce us, move us, emotionally and psychologically, and heighten our sense of empathy. A vividly cast scene can draw us more deeply into the heart of a crisis our character faces. My early drafts are often 15-20 percent longer than the final. Once I have developed the structural arc of a story, I go back through the manuscript several times, applying pressure to each paragraph, each line, stripping back any excess words, even whole passages, that slow the narrative. There is a certain ruthlessness in those later stages of revision that can make a text glow.
Q: How did your background in poetry influence the way you approached JACKIE and your other novels?
Poetry is my first love. I have read and written poetry from the time I was a child. I studied poetry during college and in my twenties. I took Seamus Heaney’s poetry seminar at Harvard and he was the teacher who first pointed out how many of my poems seemed to have a strong narrative component. Early drafts of my first novel actually began as an extended narrative poem that I slowly built into a story. I worked on that book for seven years, and although it was never published, that failed book was where I learned to write fiction.
I still write my first drafts longhand, in notebooks, and most of those early pages are written as fragments, with line breaks, bits of poetry, emotion, reflection, half-passages where I focus on the language of a thought or a moment, a realization or the turning point of a scene. I often write this early raw material in free verse without punctuation. For me, writing that way–messy, disordered– allows me to keep the early story free and open to change. The order of the narrative emerges from those notebooks. I then craft the narrative arc along a five act structure, or a seven act structure. Once I have the spine of the story essentially clear, I start writing.
Q: You’ve written multiple historical and literary novels—what is your research process like, and how do you balance fact with fiction?
The research process changes book to book, but it always begins with immersive reading of non-fiction sources. When you read multiple biographies of a historical figure, and you read them in succession, you notice that while the salient facts and events are the same, each biographical portrait is an interpretation depending on what themes and dimension of a life the writer has chosen to explore.
I researched Jackie for years before I began to write. My early drafts of the book had footnotes–I wanted to be able to tether every choice I made back to the historical record. The more I read about Jackie, the more I realized how she has not always been considered through the full range and scope of her mind. She was brilliant, strategic. A nuanced formidable intellect and a legendary wit. She spoke multiple languages, memorized long poems, bit her nails, and read the writings of Reinhold Niebuhr for fun. She once remarked that her sartorial ambition was to “resemble an Ionic column.” She was an excellent slalom water-skier. At the JFK library archives there is a video of Jackie waterskiing holding her four-year-old daughter in her arms while she skied. Again and again, I would discover these quirky details and granular bits of anecdote, fact. I became increasingly driven to create a portrait that would be at once drawn from the historical record and, for a reader, revelatory. In that early research, I read everything I could find that Caroline and John had publicly written or said about their mother. I sought out accounts shared by Jackie’s colleagues and friends. I began to gather notes from reflections and things Jackie herself had written or said. I was curious to see if I could construct the arc of a story grounded in what she loved; her passion for art, ideas, culture, language, history, children, the natural world; her care and driving commitment to her children. Her curiosity, her faith in life-long learning.
Those were the dimensions of Jackie that were interesting to me. Who she was as a creative, an intellect, an athlete, a mother. What inspired her. What drove her. I was intrigued to see if I could map the narrative arc of a story through the evolution of her intellectual life, and her intention.
E.L. Doctorow once said, “The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.” In JACKIE, that interstice is what I wanted to explore– the space between what took place and what might have; what happened to her and how the world perceived it vs. how she might have experienced it.
Q: Do you have a particular writing ritual or process that helps you get into the creative flow?
I read. Constantly. I love to read. Poetry. Novels. Plays. Contemporary stories. Translations. I love history and mythology. Whenever I get stuck in a story, I reread authors I love. W.S. Merwin. Michael Ondaatje. Marguerite Duras. Anne Carson. I love the risks Carson takes in her retellings. Her literary vision is so bold, and every time I reread her, I find something new. When it’s warm enough, I also swim. I learned to surf when I was in my forties, but the ocean sport I love most is open water swimming. Being in the ocean and the waves is always a reset.
Q: Many of your books center on strong, complex female protagonists. What draws you to these characters, and do you see a common thread between them?
In a letter to her friend Sherwood Anderson, Georgia [O'Keeffe] once wrote, “no man has been written down the way the men have written me down.” She was referring to contemporary critical reviews of her art and the eroticized gendered language assigned to her abstractions that, she believed, missed the force and power of her vision, her artistic intention, and what she was seeking to do in her abstract work. I value texts–both non-fiction and highly researched historical fiction–that strive to contribute to the conversation reexamining misunderstood or misrepresented female figures of history. That’s what I have worked to do in both JACKIE and GEORGIA. I am particularly curious about the complex and intimate relationship between a woman and power. Jackie was a woman who shaped American history even as she lived it. She was also a woman surrounded by currents of power. She had to learn to navigate that power, and ultimately harness it in order to forge a life on her own terms.
Q: Your writing often weaves together history, art, and deeply personal stories. How do you decide which elements to emphasize in a given book?
Such a great question! The question of emphasis isn’t, for me, a cerebral decision, but rather one that emerges by spending time with the story, and knowing the characters, their lives, what’s at stake for them, what they are hiding, what they love and fear to lose, what they long for and believe. Jackie’s passions for history, culture, literature, and art were deeply personal–and integral to the evolution of her intellectual life and the choices that she made.
Q: What advice would you give to aspiring writers, particularly novelists/essayists looking to blend history and fiction?
In the two biographical books I have written based on women from history–JACKIE and GEORGIA–I felt committed to hewing to the historical record. I didn’t want to bend timelines, or invent characters or facts. We sometimes imagine that fiction and non-fiction are neatly divided; we imagine fiction is “make believe” and biography is “true.” But even non-fiction accounts are an interpretation, based on the selection of facts, the elision of facts, how the facts are arranged and where the writer has chosen to place the emphasis. With both GEORGIA and with JACKIE, I didn’t want to play fast and loose with the truth, and with Jackie, I felt particularly compelled to build a portrait of her through the lens of the things she valued: her nuanced and formidable intellect, her care and commitment to her family and children; her integrity, her love of books history, art, horses, the sea. To me the most important thing any writer has to do–whether they have published or are aspiring to–is to find the story they are on fire to tell, the story they believe in; to be intentional and accountable to the form, needs and parameters of that story, and to keep writing.
Q: What’s next for you? Are you working on another novel or exploring new creative avenues?
I am working on another novel. I love writing book-length works because I love living for an extended stretch of time in the world of a story. My next novel is not set in the 20th century, but like JACKIE and like GEORGIA, the story focuses on a young woman and her complex relationship with power.
Empowering Voices: A Conversation with Sue Guiney of Writing Through (Virtual)
Mon, May 05 Free for members
Join us for a conversation with Sue Guiney, founder of the non-profit organization Writing Through. Writing Through uses creative writing as a tool to develop thinking skills, creativity, language fluency, and self-esteem in communities around the world. Sue, a visionary leader with nearly two decades' experience in international non-profit work, will share the inspiring journey from inception to global impact behind the organization - and invites the Harvardwood community to get involved.
Last Month at Harvardwood
Last Month at Harvardwood, we got down to business with Netflix CFO Spence Neumann, hit lofty notes with Broadway artists Sammi Cannold, Benjamin Nelson, and Jonathan Tolins, cracked it up with comedians Dan Mintz, Harrison Greenbaum, and Sierra Katow, and more!
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