American Magazine April 2014

“I was only 23 when I went to Iowa,”
Fierro says. “I had never hung out with
writers. I’d never been in a place where we
talked about writing. I wrote for eight hours
a day. It was exhausting and competitive.”
Yet Fierro excelled. She landed a
prestigious fellowship, then graduated
with a completed novel, Roseland. The next
logical step was to move to New York, a city
where writers’ dreams flourish—or die.
“Today’s literary renaissance
not only rose from the ashes of
Brooklyn’s industrial past, but in
many ways owes its existence to
it. For one thing, neighbourhoods
full of gorgeous 19th-century
brownstones had fallen into
neglect, allowing young creative
types, many of them writers, to
escape the high-rent districts
of Manhattan. And Brooklyn’s
former manufacturing districts
offer cheap, spacious offices for
small literary outfits breaking
off from the publishing behemoths
in Manhattan.
This has created a kind of
vertically integrated factory for
literature, where would-be poets or
novelists can find not only throngs
of other would-be writers at their
local coffee hang, but also a locally
run writing programme, excellent
bookshops and readings series,
and a cottage industry of literary
magazines and small presses.
A first stop on this literary
assembly line is the Sackett Street
Writers’ Workshop.”
—The Economist, June 2012
A YEAR OF OPENING REJECTIONS AND
THANKS-BUT-NO-THANKS NOTES from
“every editor in New York” would be enough
to beat down any creative person. For a
young writer and adjunct professor who
was adjusting to marriage and trying to make
ends meet in pricey New York (writers often
loiter in the same sad tax bracket as mimes
and musicians) while attempting to reignite
a suddenly stalled writing career, it was a
dark time.
“I needed to retreat,” Fierro says. “I had
no confidence in my writing. But I discovered
in Iowa that I loved teaching. What I feel the
most confident about is teaching writing. I
really do believe, and maybe it’s delusional,
that I can look at any book and figure out what
it needs to be engaging.”
Fierro drew heavily, but not entirely, on
her experience at Iowa when she started
Sackett Street in 2002. She wanted to build a
community, a haven really, where she could
spend time with writers while simultaneously
repairing her own shattered confidence.
While Iowa was ultracompetitive and writers
were occasionally known to browbeat one
another to tears with their critiques, Fierro
aimed to create a more comfortable, inclusive
workshop in Brooklyn.
In most Sackett Street classes, the writer
sits silently as the other participants first
discuss what they liked about the material.
Criticism comes next.
“If you’re not analyzing people’s work and
trying to figure out how they did something
that’s working, you’re not going to be able
to have that positive perspective of your
own work,” Fierro says. “Reading with a
hyperanalytical perspective, and asking
yourself how the writer accomplished this,
is how you become a better writer. It’s not so
much getting feedback from other people, it’s
learning how to read in a more confident way.”
Heather Aimee O’Neil is the second person
Fierro hired for Sackett Street. Now the
program’s assistant director, she also teaches
writing at Hunter College.
“Julia’s not somebody who’s a writer who
just happens to be a teacher,” O’Neil says of her
good friend. “She is a natural teacher. Working
with Julia has improved my writing because
she’s constantly asking why and how. If she’s
editing your work, you can’t just get away with
making a suggestion without answering why.”
Why? Why hadn’t Fierro resumed her own
writing career? With Sackett Street firmly
established and her second child having just
turned 2, she no longer had a reasonable
response. So she hired a babysitter and joined
a writer’s space in the neighborhood (the kind
of place where even a vibrating cell phone can
garner dirty looks), sat down at the computer,
and banged out Cutting Teeth.
The novel tells the story—from different
characters’ perspectives—of a group of
Brooklyn mommies (and one daddy) and
their relationships with their children, their
spouses, and each other. Every one represents
an aspect of parenting that Fierro had fear or
inadequacy about, or loved. The material can
be biting, painful, amusing, emotional, erotic,
and intense, and succeeds for many of the
same reasons Fierro has.
“It’s her curiosity for the mind and world,
and her empathy in the way that she sees
people,” O’Neil says. “Not every writer could
write a novel with so many points of view.
That is because of her capacity to really
study and examine a person’s psychology.
Her reading and writing and teaching, that’s
her religion, her philosophy. It’s the way she
experiences the world, the way she processes
it and discusses it.”
CUTTING TEETH IS BEING PUBLISHED BY
ST. MARTIN’S PRESS, one of New York’s
most prestigious houses. Although she’ll be
traveling the country doing readings and
signings in support of the book (including
one at Politics and Prose in Washington on
June 1), she’ll continue to run Sackett Street.
As its director, she still reads and responds to
every application personally. Its popularity
remains a thing of wonder to Fierro, who’s
only recently stopped apologizing for its
“accidental” success.
“So much of good writing is instinct, but a
good teacher can show you how to maximize
those instincts. Julia did that for me,” says
the novelist Keija Parssinen, author of The
Ruins of Us and a Sackett Street alum. “She
introduced me to a vocabulary of craft, such
as point of view, pacing, world, structure, and
taught me how to read like a writer. This was
perhaps the most invaluable thing Julia taught
me, because it enabled me to use every novel I
read as a learning opportunity. Julia taught
me to focus on the characters’ desires and
fears, and to bring that to the fore.”
In a way, Sackett Street taught Fierro the
same lessons.
“All those years I wasn’t writing, I was
becoming a better writer through teaching,”
she says, strolling down Court Street toward
the bookstore to lead another class. Her
voice gains slight speed and pitch, and it’s
clear that she’s looking forward to reading,
to listening, to
instructing, and to
learning from her
students.
She’s looking
forward to becoming
a better writer.
28 AMERICAN MAGAZINE APRIL 2014