Arcadia: A Novel
A Conversation with Lauren Groff '01 and Jennifer Acker '00
 "So being able to write about projected loss was being able to look at it firmly in the face and understand that it will happen. In a sort of controlled environment. It’s the same impulse that made me write about a more idealized community. It’s my way to create a plastic model that can change under the pressure of the characters and to see how things happen. The novelistic urge is to do this thing, this trick to create a hypothesis, sets characters loose and see what happens. And the plastic hypothesis and some of the many in this book are “how do you make an ideal community?” “how do you deal with grief?” “how do you deal with losing what we will all lose?'” [Trigger warning: this interview contains sexual content] |
 Jennifer Acker '00 is the founding editor of The Common, a new print and online journal featuring literature and images with a strong sense of place. She has an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars, and her translations, essays, and short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in publications such as Harper's, The New Inquiry, Ascent, and The Millions. Acker was a visiting lecturer at Amherst College in 2011-12 and is currently a Faculty Fellow at New York University Abu Dhabi. She writes a monthly column about her Middle Eastern adventures, From the 17th Floor, for The Common Online. |