Women Writing Nature: A Glance Across the Divide

FALL 2021

women writing nature

A Glance Across The Divide

Edited by Jessica Mannhaupt

Thank

you to our contributors

Debbie Aspromonti Rachel B Lila Campbell Maxie DeBiso Hamna Haque Jessica Mannhaupt Josie Racette Sarah Stauffer Lily Vanier-White Sara Way

Dear reader,

Nature writing, for me, has always been clogged with the romanti cized, epiphanic moments of writers that embody the “lone enraptured male” archetype. Don’t get me wrong, there is a reason why writers like Henry David Thoreau, Robert Frost, and John Muir are so upheld in the literary field. But when I first read The Road Not Taken at age 16, I felt there was something blocking me from relating to the words. They were, of course, beautifully crafted, but it was an experience with nature that I was unfamiliar with. I come from a suburban town on Long Island and never experienced two roads diverg ing into a yellow wood. It wasn’t until 2020 when I first read Annie Dillard’s Seeing that I fully connected with the art of nature writing. I came to realize that the point of experiencing nature and writing it down is not to experience some romantic or cathartic moment, but to admire both the mundanity and the vastness of all beings.

In this collection of nature writing, you will be reading pieces from stu dents in Women Writing Nature at Hofstra University, taught by Sophie Hawkins. However, this project slowly turned into something more than a collection of student work. It is a way for me to explore the art of curating a collective project and work with like-minded individuals who are passionate about rede fining what it means to “write” nature. It is about the experience of immersing oneself in nature as much as it is about writing the experiences down. You will see excerpts from daily nature journals, haikus, collective poems, and essays pertaining to our goal to demystify the notion of a romanticized nature.

Considering the impending climate crisis that we are all experiencing, nature writing is arguably needed in society more than ever. We must all reconsider the definition of nature and the human’s relationship with it if we want to continue to exist in an environment along with other beings. We must learn how to truly see other beings; not from the human-centric eye, but from a relational perspective that is rooted in mutuality and reciprocity. In this way, we can at least attempt to glance across the divide that we have inherited. Through this perspective, we attempt to blur the edges between nature and culture, become entangled in the ravel of all beings, and truly see.

So please, come along the journey with me and enjoy this collection of women writing nature.

–Jessica Mannhaupt, Editor

“It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance … I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment … I was lifted and struck.”

–Annie Dillard, Pilgrim At Tinker Creek

As soon as the window opened The roach took flight –SS

An ant Forging their own chemical path Destined for death. –LVW

Lost famous heron Found the breast-feeding mother Ignored tress pass sign –JM

Drawn to the porchlight

A tattered wing moth rests Caught for a while –LC

Tap tap on the glass

The bird demands attention Begging to come in –DA

The tree stands tall Branches swaying in the wind Only to be stabbed in the heart.

MD

Staging an Intervention Hamna Haque

I saved a life today. Or at least, I think I did. Small and gray, ovalshaped and probably not longer than half an inch. Tiny. Several pairs of legs and two small antennas, crawling on the sidewalk. I almost didn’t notice at first, with the dull color of its shell blending in with the equally dull pavement. Perhaps it didn’t even want to be seen anyway.

If I pushed someone out of the way of a speeding car, I’m sure they themselves (and indeed all other witnesses) would sense the rush of a danger averted. Can we say the same thing about insects? Did this roly-poly sense that it was about to be stepped on and squashed, its life in direct and immediate threat?

In Buddhist and Jain ethics, monks may often go to great lengths to avoid causing harm, taking deliberate steps to ensure no injury comes of their actions (e.g. sweeping the ground before they walk or wearing a mask so as to not inadvertently harm the smallest and least visible of life forms). Their guiding principle is ahimsa or nonviolence. But if insects lack the pain receptors to actually feel pain, can they suffer? Moreover, what does it mean to cause harm?

After the pill bug miraculously survived the careless stampede, I lunged forward. It curled into itself when I attempted to pick it up, clearly afraid of me. I’m thousands of times bigger and stronger, and clearly it had every reason to fear me.

Do insects even have emotions? And if so, are these conscious or unconscious? Is rolling into a ball a proactive defense mechanism or a paralysis of terror? How would we even be able to tell? Are we not prisoners of our language systems that actively exclude non-human others?

Frantically, I searched for a method of transportation to help me carry the creature to safety. Spotting a leaf in my peripheral vision, I reached for it and crouched down. But it felt like this little pill bug was more afraid of me than the masses of people who could’ve unconsciously stepped on it. I set the smooth but slightly withered leaf down on the ground, away from the sidewalk, and watched the bug hesitantly uncurl. In turn I let out a breath I didn’t even know I was holding.

But no! The pill bug begins to crawl back towards the dull yet treacher ous pavement. Should I have moved it further? Was my intervention but a measly exercise in futility? Maybe I could have taken the bug home? I ricocheted from relief to doubt to anxiety.

Helen Macdonald suggests that “when we look closely at an animal, we ask what it sees. We remember that other beings have different needs and desires from us, that the world is not here just for us.” I had begun to ask, but I had no answers. I didn’t know what the pill bug eats or what conditions it best thrives in, or anything else about it. What was I thinking? Why was I inserting myself into a situation that I only understood through the filters of a human lens? Who was I to take it away?

Was I projecting my own feelings upon the tiny creature—a creature whose eyes consist of only a few cells, incapable of seeing me and my internal conflict. The novelist Kate Zambreno writes of this concern for animals in terms of a gauge: “I know I’m not doing so well when I get too caught up in the solitary lives of stray animals... It is the intensity of my concern for them that alarms me.” Did I truly have empathy for the creature or was I hiding my own distress? Was I creating a narrative in my head in which I played the heroic saviour figure?

What would have been better for the insect, moving it or leaving well alone? Which option would have caused it the least amount of harm? In Thom as Nagel’s famous essay, he recounts how he noticed a spider stuck inside a urinal. Day after day, he repeatedly visits the spider, feeling horrible for its predicament, finally taking a paper towel and removing it from the urinal. The spider sat, unmoving, and the next day it lay dead on the floor, its legs shriveled. Nagel acted out of empathy, intending to save the spider from what, in his perspective, was a poor quality of life, and yet the consequences of his actions had clearly harmed the spider. Having good intentions does not mean good results.

“Maybe I should have just left it be—why intervene, after all? It only leads to trouble.” –Kathleen Jamie

What choice to make? Pick up the insect once again and move it fur ther away? Would relocating it be any better? Or refuse the choice and leave it to fate? But I couldn’t erase myself from the situation. I had already intervened once. In quantum physics, the very act of watching affects the experi ment—the observer affecting observed reality. I was then already an implicated observer. The illusion of choice. Anything I did or didn’t do would impact the outcome. In short, there was no escape for either of us.

Caterpillars

Rachel B

Caterpillars are like myths. Shapeshifting, transformative, impossible. That a walking creature can will itself to fly is the stuff dreams are made of. Seeing the caterpillar inch its way around me makes me want to stay put—to simply watch as it samples leaf after leaf, as though each were a rare delicacy.

How does the caterpillar know what’s enough and when it’s time? Can it already intimate its future predators if not its nascent wings? My caterpillar is on the larger side, but I think it still has a ways to go. We too eat each and ev ery day. Munch, chew, swallow, repeat. Each and every day, but without this promise of transformation. There is no amount that I can forage that will turn me into something new, nothing that will lend me this sense of incongruent pur pose. I will not take to the skies, nor will I burrow the winter away. Why do the caterpillar and the dormouse get this chance that I do not? Is it because they are stronger than I? That they don’t give up, not once? Or is it that they don’t believe life to be otherwise and simply get on with their unbelievable mission?

“And the moral of that is—‘Be what you would seem to be’—or, if you’d like it put more simply—‘Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.’”

–Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Proverbial Squirrel Collective Poem

They say, giving advice to a stupid man is like giving salt to a squirrel.

I say, a squirrel has no use for man-made constructions–And what else is advice but a shoddy shack, salt in the wounds?

They say, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn sometimes. I say, squirrels are blinded by their greed–After all, would you rather an acorn or puddle-soaked kaiser?

They say, a leader does not rise for a squirrel.

I say, this makes of a leader a mere obstacle–

Over which the squirrel is free to roam.

Thoreau said the squirrel that you kill in jest dies in earnest.

I say, a flock of birds–enough to murder–Can oust a squirrel from her tree.

Emerson said the squirrel hoards nuts without knowing what they do. I say, every squirrel has a whiny old lover waiting at home.

They say, the squirrel does not talk back to the elephant. I say, the squirrel has no need–Its coal-black gaze reads my darkest secrets.

They say, no matter how high the squirrel jumps, it will eventually fall onto the ground.

I say no matter how high the branch, the nutshells will always fall before the squirrel–

The question remains: Do falling nuts make a sound if no-one is around to hear?

They say, the squirrel can beat the rabbit climbing a tree, but the rabbit makes the best stew.

I say, when we give a squirrel a bar mitzvah, we never see him again.

Vignettes Debbie Aspromonti

The neighborhood is startlingly still, as if caught in a vacuum. I see no children playing or dogs dragging their owners down the street or any of the usual signs of life. Even the trees stand ramrod straight like solemn soldiers. Every once in a while, there are moments like this where time stands still, and it feels like you’re the only person on the planet.

I used to long for solitude. But since the world itself became a stranger, I now long for the company of laughter. The potent demand for isolation—when loneliness gnawed on my ribs and feasted on my bones, eating me from the inside out—turned solitude gray. And not even the soft gray of bird’s feathers, but the sterile gray of steel.

...

The tree hangs like a monkey dangling upside-down from a branch. Its branches rain down like gentle sorrow in motion. I think of magic portals that transport you to another world; if I only say the right words, the branches will part and I’ll be admitted into a hidden realm. I think of treehouses, of clubhouses, of secret hideaways. Should this tree envelop me, folding me within its leafy arms, would I simply emerge into the world we know as though no time had passed at all? Or would the world have moved on without me, with its turning and burning and loving and laughing?

The wind is vicious today, tearing through the flowers and tugging at my clothes. It rifles through the branches of the tree, feeling out the mysterious co-ordinates of that magical portal, but I must continue on without it.

...

She bounds across the grass in perfunctory bounces, focused on bring ing the small green ball back to me and nothing else. When she deposits it at my feet, her tongue lolls out of her mouth, so it appears that she is grinning, so pleased with herself for completing this task. Behind her, the roses are dying; she is unaware. As is the black butterfly that cuts through them before scissoring through the sky. There one second, gone the next.

I haven’t given her my full attention, so she bounces now to the tall maple tree where she cranes her neck just so, waiting for her squirrel friend from this morning to appear again. He doesn’t come. She rejoins my side to enter the house.

“In September dawns, I barely breathe – I am an image in a ball of glass. The world is suspended there and I in it”

–

Nan

Shepard, The Living Mountain

I am hardly ever up at dawn, but the September morning felt fragile, suspended. I felt the world hold its breath with me – the trees, the squirrel standing stock-still at the base of one of them, the eerie stillness of the grass. And then, after unmeasured time, we collectively exhaled.

The boy walking in front of me ducked his head to avoid the orange monarch that keeps making an appearance, the one that commands attention with a flutter of its wings. I nearly laughed. Why be unnerved by a butterfly? If walking barefoot is a benediction, so too the butterflies, birds and leaves. Perhaps he should have wished on the dandelion, a wish disguised as a weed.

...

The wind is ferocious, propelling my feet forward on the sidewalk, turn ing a voluntary act involuntary. The wind has teeth, biting through my clothes, nipping at my ankles and any where it can find a patch of exposed skin. The wind is a bully, swirling the leaves in ominous threats, wreaking havoc in whis tling whispers.

...

I have always thought that birds are naturally untrustworthy, that they view us, rightfully, as predators and thus hesitate at getting too close. That’s what makes this bird so remarkable. I am only a hair away, a breath apart— both of us alert to the precariousness of the spell. And yet, it remains. These are moments that feel like magic, a testing of the tenuous thread that connects two living beings—the bird and I.

I blink and the thread has snapped, the spell has been broken – the bird has flown away.

...

There is a slight film across the surface of the water, like a cloud mov ing across a blue sky. The tree looks diseased, its bark like the curling wallpaper of an abandoned home.

When I think of water, I think of transparency; when I think of bark, I think of texture—its roughness, riddles and bumps. The opacity of the pond hints at secrets withheld. The peeled nakedness of the trunk feels as ugly as a drunken confession.

Broccoli stem trees–

How they bring illusion Yet bruise the vision –JM

After the rain

The worms explored The birds enjoyed the feast –SS

Oh you pretty thing An overnight internet sensation How long people will admire –LC

It sheds skin like clothes Revealing secrets unknown A new layer found –DA

Juvenile butterflies

An easy meal for many birds Free for a second –LVW

Lone mushroom stem Swimming in October air Among orange plastic balls –JM

Survival Sarah Stauffer

The rocks were jagged but the beach promised solitude and quiet, or so I thought.

The waves crashed at the break and rolled over the sand. The beach hoppers ran back and forth, dodging the white foam that formed right before the waves retreated. The wind whipped and whirled the sand into beautiful patterns, like snow swirling from trees on a blustery winter’s day.

A seagull intermittently struggled to fly into the wind, but soon returned to the huddle in the sand. They cried together, their voices carrying across the beach. The sound of the gulls was piercing, a cry more than a song. The lucky ones would get enough height to drop a mussel on the jagged rocks, a percussive crack to their cries. The solidarity of the huddle is broken. Two gulls com pete for the mussel. They cry and lash out at each other. But the battle is short, and seemingly no grudges are held. Even when relaxed, gulls are constantly on guard, alert to possible danger and bounty alike.

The water enveloped me like a blanket, warmer than the windy air and more soothing as I closed my eyes and felt the current. I swam through the waves as they crashed, letting their power pick me up and place me wherever they wanted. I let myself become a pawn in nature’s larger game, taking a break from being society’s pawn.

The sun breaks, rays angled down through the clouds. The streaks create a halo. Sand crabs crawl out of their sediment home as the tide rises and scuttle across the sand. Their shells a pearly white, they entice the gulls to dive and scoop them up. Most bury back into the sand or move into the water to hide among the larger crabs. Two larger crabs raise their arms as if to say “back off”. They dance with their pincers up.

We all move on. The crabs scuttle away, and I return not only to dry land but to the land of story-telling. I cannot know what life is like for the gull. For us, survival has become a familiar story, cushioned by the comforts and products that we take for granted. But for the gulls and the crabs, survival seems closer to embodied skill. Our survival is however not a given, and perhaps we need to remember that not all fairy tales have happy endings.

Who is the Worm? Josie Racette

The rain hits my head as I speed through a puddle. I curse loudly and feel my sock slowly soak up the water in my shoe. Trying to ignore the squelching, I concentrate instead on the water trickling down my neck. I squirm uncomfortably.

Rainy days made me think of the world beneath the surface. A world of worms and insects beyond the reach of understanding. Yet worms are incredible creatures. They can breathe underwater because of the slimy coat they wear over their pink bodies.

Waterproof gear. Squirming bodies. Who is the worm and who the human?

“To get stuck on a single hierarchy is to miss the bigger picture, the messy truth of nature, the ‘whole machinery of life.’ The work of good science is to try to peer beyond the ‘convenient’ lines we draw over nature. To peer beyond intuition, where something wilder lives. To know that in every organism at which you gaze, there is complexity you will never comprehend.”

–Lulu Miller, 2020

Flight of the Human Jessica Mannhaupt

Flight is a recently demystified vehicle for the human. Because of this, Mom and I were left anxious in the airport, surviving on ginger ale and one singular Xanax (for her, not me). As we rolled along the concrete, gaining speed for lift off, I watched the scenes change outside my window, Mom’s sweaty hand clutching mine. The inevitable disruption to the sense of scale was no less eerie for it its inevitability. The buildings became smaller and I became larger. Rising high in altitude, the trees became broccoli stems instead of the vast beings I recently met in the forest. The ocean became a puddle to splash in on a rainy day.

Soon, we merged into the cotton ball clouds I was so used to craning my neck to look at. Only now there was no separation between the cloud and me. We meshed and clashed into a field of smoke and blinding whiteness. As fast as we were below the clouds, we’d been spat out into the puffy abundance and our speed, though no less, seemed to be so. I wonder if the songbirds or grackles I’m acquainted with on the ground have ever flown this high. I want to know how small they would look from where I sit now, here in my perch thou sands of feet above them. It is a small irony, but appropriate to the disruption in scale, that this distance between me and them is measured in feet. After all, what good are feet if there is no ground to walk on?

As I detangle from the trance of the picture show that was take-off, I turn my attention to Mom–her eyes tightly shut, navel drawn down into her spine, her sweaty hands still holding Dad’s and mine as though we were the only ones keeping her alive. Do baby birds feel the way I do when their moth er is terrified: helpless and wishing to communicate calmness and comfort?

Later on during the flight, Mom told me about a huge praying mantis that had visited her office. She said that the insect looked up at her as if it were giving her a high 5. Helen Macdonald speaks of our tendency to see animals as mirrors of ourselves: “We laugh at animal videos that make us yearn to experience life as joyfully as a bounding lamb” . In this instance, the praying mantis was a vehicle, for my mom at least, to feel less anxious in a moment when she had no control. She projected human meaning onto the insect’s supposed “high five”. Though this interaction was a mere passing of a second, it nonetheless helped her glance across the divide of human and animal.

Lucy died today. There is no other way to say it. No poetics; no symphony. She was here one moment and gone the next. No matter how Steph and I grasped her during those final breaths, the clock kept ticking. The clock kept ticking, but I was frozen in time. I was out of my element once again. The clock kept ticking, but her heart stopped beating. This sudden absence of motion under my hand plummeted my heart. Her diaphragm was no longer expanding and contracting. I stared, desperately waiting for it to start pump ing again. Why wasn’t she moving? Why wasn’t she snoring? Why wasn’t she begging? Why, why, why, why…

Coming out of this trance, I noticed our hands still clung to her. I started to pet her ears, her eyes, her cheeks, her nose. There was no flinch any longer when I touched her smushed nose. I was filling up with grief—it was her lack of protest that I could no longer deny. But of course, this grief is not hers. It is mine. It is my life projected onto hers, right? I know this, I really do. So why can’t I stop the tears?

Lucy acted as a mirror today. Her life reflected onto all of us, but it was no-one but ourselves that looked back at us in this mirror. We saw our experi ences with her through her droopy, weathered eyes. Her life ended today, but ours still went on, and the clock kept ticking. ...

Mom’s sweaty hands were full of life, of uncertainty, of nervousness, and of fear; all human perceptions and reactions to what she was going through. But in clutching Lucy’s aged fur, there was nothing but certainty–the certitude of mortality, and for the end of suffering.

Inevitably, the flight of the human must plummet, and in so doing we return to our element. But one day, just as inevitably, we will be returned to the elements.

Night Walk Lila Campbell

The world was quiet today. It felt as though even the racing cars and falling footsteps took their turns to be softer. I wonder why. I can even feel myself writing slower to silence the pen’s scratching. The world’s absorption is one of my favorite mysteries. Why do the cars soften their engines and why does my body join into the ever-silent chorus of this night?

I lost my voice today. It is scratchy and strained. But without it, I listen. I’m intent on listening to the world because I can only type a response so fast. I thought fresh air would help and its cool embrace of my lungs made me wonder why I didn’t come sooner. The night, as quiet as it was, did not cause me panic or terror– it held me much like a mother’s embrace. Warm and tranquil, I let the wind lead and my silent chorus erupted into the bond of music. The cicadas, crickets, even some birds who, much like teens, seemed to be up and out far too late.

Why don’t we have the ability to lose ourselves in the world? To slip in and out of this liminal space that night calls for? I could not imagine being out of my body but I want to try. I think it could change my idea of what the world could be. The possibilities that arise when longing for this feeling are endless. Would I be able to handle looking at myself when I am myself? Is this the way an out-of-body experience occurs? How far would I stray from my physical body, praying for its return?

Floating? Flying? Soaring?

Through the air? Within the clouds?

Would I see a baby smile for the first time?

I know my little piece of the world. I carved it myself, no doubt. But what haven’t I seen? What moments are occurring across the world that would hold me close and whisper: this is what you needed to see? This is how the night calls me–to transcend into the air and let go of the bodily bonds that have held me tight.

This is night. This is the act of walking at night. There is an ambiguous line between walking and dreaming. It is in this act that I am able to open up to an environment that brings out curiosity and exploratory thoughts about my selfhood.

I don’t like bees. Black and yellow, orange, lemon, mustard, amber all bring me agitation. Six-legged creatures with three sections of body seem unnatural. My skin crawls from their sound. The grating sound of itching green legs echoes so loudly that it reaches every other creature–it determines my rage.

The initial sensation of the blades against my thighs jolts me to the comfort of the plush seats. I see the damned black and yellow confining me, ready to attack. I watch with fear as one nears my leg. I leap to avoid it as it pays no mind to me. Suddenly they’re everywhere. Suddenly every step I take feels like the wrong one. The bees had no interest in ending my life, but it was the possibility of its small stinger plunging into my skin that made me want to end theirs. I realize that those are my human emotions reflected onto the bees. Maybe it’s not that I don’t like bees, but the human projection of the danger of bees. Worry fades as I retreat from the space to leave them in their peace. Making my way across the cobblestone, I hear nothing but the echoes of my shoes against the stone. I hear my own thoughts and blood rushing to my ears. One by one, the cobblestones disappear and I stand on the pure earth. Suddenly I can hear everything. To my left, a creek with rushing water so loud lured me to find its source. It is amazing that a natural body of water could produce that much noise. To my right, a bush with berries in colours I’d never seen. Green turning to blue turning to a brilliant purple. I picked one to hold with me. I meticulously analyzed the collection of English ivy and berries in my hand and a six-legged creature with three sections of body looked back at me. I gently lay it on a leaf near the ground. It paused before scurrying away.

In the street outside a school what the children learn possesses them. Little boys yell as they stone a flock of bees trying to swarm between the lunchroom window and an iron grate. The boys sling furious rocks smashing the windows. The bees, buzzing their anger, are slow to attack. Then one boy is stung into quicker destruction

and the school guards come long wooden sticks held out before them they advance upon the hive beating the almost finished rooms of wax apart mashing the new tunnels in while fresh honey drips down their broomsticks and the little boy feet becoming expert in destruction trample the remaining and bewildered bees into the earth.

Curious and apart four little girls look on in fascination learning a secret lesson and trying to understand their own destruction. One girl cries out “Hey, the bees weren’t making any trouble!” and she steps across the feebly buzzing ruins to peer up at the empty, grated nook “We could have studied honey-making!”

–Audre Lorde, The Bees

“The Road Not Taken” Revisited Sara Way

“ Two roads diverged in a wood, and I… I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”- Robert Frost Roads are something of an enigma to me. They never seem to have a concrete, no pun intended, start or end, and stretch everywhere. They surround our homes and businesses. They wind through the woods, are built over bodies of water, and in some areas still remain unpaved. Roads seem to be something of an interruption. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that eighty-four percent of driving related deaths occurred due to wandering into “la la land.” So much for focusing on the nature surrounding us.

I hear my mother’s voice, frustrated at being unable to read the num bers on exit signs littering the highway. “Someone needs to trim these vines. How is anyone supposed to know what the signs say?” I am not frustrated at her response, more annoyed at the irony of what she has said. Aren’t the signs really what’s out of place here?

These three perspectives, Frost’s, my mother’s, and mine, remind me of romanticism, literalism, and nature-culture. Rather than trying to debate these perspectives with a dead poet and my mother, I have written a corrected version of “The Road Not Taken”:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry that I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could.

The first had animals running amuck, Birds fluttering from tree to tree, Hawks attacking bunnies hopping into bushes, Snakes coming to slither against my feet, Bears starting to bear their teeth.

The second was dark. It was muddy, and I could hear cats purring And glowing eyes hid in the bushes.

I remained standing at the diversion, Unsure of which to choose.

Neither path was appealing, both representing fear, But I have made it this far.

I started down the second path, Unsure of how long it would take me.

Cats began to scratch at my feet sinking in the mud, Fearful of snakes hiding.

I pushed through a bush, Trying to crawl to the second path. I felt stinging on my face as I pushed through To the other side.

I was met by a bear, face to face. I was stuck. Time was frozen.

I had chosen both paths, Scared of what I had seen. I was an intruder.

About the Editor

Jessica Mannhaupt is a Publishing Studies major with Fine Arts and Religion minors at Hofstra University. She graduates in December 2022 and is starting her career in the publishing industry soon after. Jessica was the Art Director of Hofstra’s Growl Magazine for a year, and is now the Design Editor of Growl. She works as a Bookseller at Burton’s Bookstore in Greenport, NY. On her free time, she loves to crochet, curate every specific spotify playists, and curl up with a good book.

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