I didn’t enter USC as a creative writing major. Hell, during my first semester, I figured that whatever philosophical or literary exploration I’d be embarking upon during my undergraduate career would be in service of what my parents (and many, many others, I’d wager to say) would call a “practical career,” or what universities across the nation chalk up to a “general education.” And who knows? My four years in college may very well have proceeded down that route, had it not been for the English classes I stumbled into and then pursued on my own–literature seminars covering everything from early modern necromancy to contemporary decolonial theory; creative writing workshops in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry–as well as the people I met along the way.
I feel pretty dumb with luck, then, to be honored with a “Jimmy,” and would like to quickly namedrop some of the professors (in no particular order) to whom I owe my deepest gratitude, and also my deepest admiration: Molly Bendall, Joseph Boone, Anna Journey, Maggie Nelson, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Danzy Senna. Thank you to each of you for your generosity, brilliance, and care, both in the classroom and beyond. And thank you to friends and everyone else in the English department for helping me to find home. What luck.
