The Spirit of Community and Collaboration
When it comes to my favorite writers, I keep up to date with what they’re writing, winning, saying, doing—you get it. Yes, I’m the type of person who has Google alerts set up for multiple writers (Claudia Rankine, Renee Gladman, Amina Cain, and Tiphanie Yanique, to name a few) and, if they are on Facebook, I receive notifications when they post, which is how I found out about Chicken of the Sea.
On June 13, 2018, Viet Thanh Nguyen posted: “Ellison’s first, and hopefully not last, co-creative effort with me. He came up with the title, story, and illustrations, while I wrote it…I believe he was inspired by his time at the Djerassi residency with illustrator Thi Bui, who gave him a lot of attention.”
I thought, If I were an editor at a press, I’d publish that book.
A couple of weeks later, he posted again: “On an otherwise bleak day, let me just note that , 4 years and 11 months, has obtained a literary agent to represent him (and me) on his book CHICKEN OF THE SEA, which I mentioned here on Facebook and which led an editor from a notable press to express interest in said book. More details to
