About the Work: Stephanie Early Green
- Lindsey Anderson
- 21 hours ago
- 2 min read
About the Work: Stephanie Early Green
In our “About the Work” series, Olga Mexina and Tom Sokolowski ask recent contributors for insight into their writing or for current sources of inspiration. Read Stephanie Early Green's work in SER Vol. 43.1.
This essay was sparked in part by Alexander Chee's reflections on wrestling with layered, complicated identities, and the difficulties of trying to define oneself in the face of inadequate terms. I've long searched for a way to pin down my identity, to feel comfortable claiming the Mexican-American part of myself in a way that felt individual and authentic. This question came into new focus when I became serious about writing fiction. I wondered: what kind of a writer am I? What identity can I claim? Can it ever be enough to just write as myself, to not feel the need to justify, explain, or conform? What is the value in looking back, in taking stock of where I came from? This essay is an attempt to engage with those questions.
The decision to integrate photos and clippings was inspired by a lecture given by Marisa Silver in the winter of 2024 at the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Her lecture was entitled "Picture Books," and it examined works of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction that integrated pictures alongside or within the text, creating a conversation between word and image. Marisa's lecture spoke to me as someone whose favorite part of any biography or memoir is that glossy section full of photos. I wanted to give my reader a look at my face and the faces that preceded mine. The photos, I feel, serve as a kind of authentication of the text.
STEPHANIE EARLY GREEN’s writing appears or is forthcoming in Narrative, The Chicago Tribune, New Ohio Review, The Cincinnati Review, Water~Stone Review, Juked, and elsewhere. She is a current MFA candidate in fiction at Warren Wilson College. She lives in Virginia with her family, and is at work on a novel.