Alumni Spotlight: Nick White

Dr. Nick White, who graduated from UNL in 2016 with a doctorate in creative writing, is currently an assistant professor at The Ohio State University.

His novel, How to Survive a Summer, centers on a gay man reckoning with the trauma he endured at an ex-gay ministry conversion camp. The novel was named one of “Book Riot’s Best Queer Books of 2017.” His 2018 short story collection, Sweet and Low: Stories, was called “One of the Most Anticipated Books of Summer 2018” by O Magazine. Dr. White has been praised by the Washington Post as “Tennessee Williams … transposed to the twenty-first-century South.”

To learn more, visit Nick's website at thenickwhite.com.

What are you most excited about in your professional life?

I’m really excited about the book I’m working on! It’s about the radical fairy movement of the late 70s and radical fairy sanctuaries.

I’m also excited about my teaching. I’m teaching a genre workshop on horror writing, and that’s been super exciting. The students have been great, just wonderful … It seems to be working really well.

What was your favorite class, reading, or project from your time at UNL?

All of the workshops were great, and so were the literature classes I took, but I think the class that probably changed me the most as a thinker and writer would be Roland Végső’s “Intro to Theory” class.

Not coming from a theory background, it was so nice, having someone as knowledgeable and patient as he was walk us through these very dense texts … Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze … and do so in such a clear and cogent way.

It taught me the value of something I think I already instinctively knew but didn’t fully feel the effects of until I took that class, which is the benefit of reading a work that’s just a bit above my comprehension or range. Throwing myself into a difficult text, and even if I didn’t understand everything that was communicated in that text, there was a value in forcing my mind to work with it and digest it somehow. It changed me as a person and a thinker, and I think that’s really the point.

Looking back, which UNL professor do you think had the greatest influence on you?

Without a doubt, Jonis Agee. Inside the workshop but also her open door policy of meeting with students during her office hours. I would come in and express my doubts as a writer, and she was the best at giving pep talks and strategizing.

What makes her such an excellent teacher, and what I’ve tried to emulate here, is that you come to her, and she treats you like a fellow writer and professional. That was the first time that someone had done that to me and made me feel like I could do it. And I was like, Oh, I can write a novel.

She was so generous with her time and so knowledgeable about the business of publishing but also the craft of a book and just phenomenal.

One of the things I try to carry on here is that generosity of spirit, because I think you don’t find that everywhere. I’ve talked to other people who have been in other programs, and writers are not always as generous as Jonis is … It was so helpful.

The whole creative writing faculty is a murderer’s row of talent and expertise and generosity. I met all of them at the right time—Tim Schaffert, Joy Castro, Kwame Dawes, Grace Bauer, Ted Kooser … Even though I didn’t take a class with all of them, they knew who I was. They seemed really invested in the program. I was there when we hired Jennine Capó Crucet and Chigozie Obioma, and they were amazing too. Jennine Capó Crucet gave the best job talk I have ever seen in my life … It influenced the job talk I gave. She was a dynamo and completely stellar.

What is your favorite memory of an extracurricular activity from your time at UNL?

We were doing the event, Tea and Sympathy, for EGSA (the English Graduate Student Association). It was in the Bailey during exams; we would get food and coloring books for people (for a break from the stress of Finals). It was the year I was president, and I was in charge of getting the Buffalo Wild Wings. This memory starts out bad, but actually turns out to be pretty good.

When I went to get the Buffalo Wild Wings, they had a slick floor. And I was coming out with the Wild Wings in the atrium, going outside, and I slipped forward. My face planted against the glass door, and I fell back, and I slung the Wild Wings out of my hand.

I got up, and I was sort of dazed and confused. They were like, “Are you OK?” I said, “Oh, I’m fine,” and then I felt something trickling down my head: “What is this?” And they said, “Sir … you’re bleeding.”

But I was like, “We’ve got to find the Wild Wings! I have Tea and Sympathy I have to get to!” We were looking for them and looking for them, could not find them anywhere.

I had slung them somehow behind one of the doors. We open the door. It looks like a murder scene. All of these Wild Wings!

They gave us two $100 gift cards for Buffalo Wild Wings and doubled my order … So I come into Bailey Library, bringing all these Wild Wings, with this bruise on my head, and I feel like a hero, because we have Wild Wings! And gift cards!

Katie McWain, who was VP at the time, and Stevie Seibert Desjarlais were like, “Nick, um, I think you need to sit down. Your head looks bad.” … So Stevie was—in this Tea and Sympathy room—checking my eyes for concussion symptoms, and Katie was fixing a plate of Buffalo Wild Wings. And I just felt very cared for in that moment. We were all laughing and joking about it, but they were making sure I was okay. It’s just a memory I have of togetherness, when we were all frazzled and stressed out.

Thinking about that memory now … When I think of the program, the community it can foster was across disciplines. Stevie was in literature, Katie was in comp/rhet, and I was in creative writing. It was different from some M.F.A. programs where creative writers are segregated off. I felt very much included in the rest of the program, and that was something that I really, really liked.