Mike Scalise

This week, I’ve decided, is People I Know Week. After last week’s call to my DC-area acquaintances to do more things, I’ve been reminded by some that they actually have been. So I’m devoting this week (or what’s left in it) to my friends’ accomplishments, in hopes of either fostering a community or making myself feel somehow important for knowing these people.

Which brings me to Jennifer Ann Janisch, a tremendous essayist who happens to be local. Despite the fact that she’s mid-way through an MFA program that can be pretty clueless about how to publish, over the last few months, she’s reeled out a few publications, all of which deserve a look. From what I can tell, developing young essayists generally fall into one of three categories: (1) voice-driven literary comedians or monologue-ists, (2) bleed-on-the page confessionalists, and (3) info-journalists who carve out poetic insight from history, religious studies, etc. (Their favorite writers are usually Michael Pollan, Anne Fadiman, or Annie Dillard).

All three types of writers have their plusses and minuses, but Jennifer’s somehow able to conjure and combine the best features of each. Example: I once saw her read a hilarious piece about her Italian family’s poker game ritual while holding up signs–Subterranean Homesick Blues-like–to translate the both the meanings and cultural contexts of the Italian obscenities that flew from her aunts’ and uncles’ mouths over the course of a single game of Texas Hold ‘Em.

So head on over to Fringe magazine to read “Solo,” her essay about the unbearable white-ness of being (single page link) that prompted one maternal blogger to write: “The whole time I was thinking ‘What are you doing!?’ It is incredibly well written. I was so immersed in her story that I didn’t hear my baby crying in her crib after her nap until my husband asked me if I heard her.”

Or check out “After the Comets” at Prick of the Spindle. Probably best to let an excerpt do the talking here:

I was lying in the middle of the Palisades Parkway and all I could see was the stars. Focusing on the night sky, I tried to find the constellations that my father had once taught me but the stars were blurry, blending together like television static. I became dizzy and turned away. Gravel and glass on the road sparkled in the headlight beams. Like stars, I thought. Shadows disrupted the light, muted voices. I tried to lift my head to see but my chin fell limp against my collarbone. Then I saw the metal rod and the large, triangular shard of glass that were sticking out of my upper arm like javelins, wedged in my flesh.

So to recap: Jennifer is good. Stay tuned this week for more profiles of people I know doing things.

Fringe: “Solo” by Jennifer Ann Janisch (link)

Prick of the Spindle: “After the Comets” (link)

The Mom Crowd: “Creative Writing Moms and Literary Magazines” (link)