Introducing Amanda Oliver
Sean Glatch | September 9, 2024 |
About Amanda Oliver
Amanda Oliver is the author of the nonfiction book Overdue: Reckoning With the Public Library (Chicago Review Press), named a Best Book of 2022 by Esquire. Her essays have appeared in Electric Literature, the Los Angeles Times, the Rumpus, PANK, and Medium, among many others. She was the nonfiction editor of Joyland Magazine from 2018 to 2023, and she has taught creative writing for the University of California at Riverside. She holds a BA and an MLS from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and an MFA in nonfiction from the University of California at Riverside.
What existing writing inspires you to write?
There are a few titles I consistently return to for inspiration:
Anne Caron’s The Glass Essay
Rebecca Solnit’s Reflections of My Nonexistence: A. Memoir
Fanny Howe’s The Winter Son
Diane Seuss’s Wolf Lake, White Gown
The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton
Jenny Offill’s Department of Speculation
Teju Cole’s Strange Things
Ben Ehrenreich’s Desert Notebooks
I also regularly read what The Rumpus and Joyland Magazine publish. I appreciate that they uplift new and established writers’ work.
What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received?
When I was doing my MFA, I really loved working with the poets, who seemed, overall, to have much more patience with themselves and their work than us nonfiction writers. I did thesis hours with a poetry professor and I had two book-length projects I wanted to work one — one which I knew could and should be published first, and a second project that I understood needed to come later. I was lamenting that the second one would take more time and the professor looked at me and said, “Well, maybe it’s your ten year book.” It was a profound moment of realizing that writing takes the time that it takes.
What made you want to be a writer?
Reading. I learned to read quite young and grew up across the street from a public library. I devoured books and understood them as beautiful vessels to communicate and dream and think. I knew very young that I wanted to contribute to the world in that way.
What are your current writing projects?
I semi-regularly write a Substack (amandaoliver.substack.com) about my life and writing. And I am working on a second book about the idea of Home, with a capital H, and how this shifts and fragments over a lifetime, particularly for women.
What do you like to do outside of writing?
I live in the Mojave Desert and spend a lot of my time hiking and outdoors. My next door neighbor is a professional rattlesnake wrangler, so I’ve been helping her rescue and relocate rattlesnakes for the last two years. I love working with animals and traveling as much as possible.
Check out Amanda’s upcoming course!
Write Again: Returning to the Page
Rediscover your writing and voice. Write new pieces, connect in community, and leave with a clear path forward.
