We were lucky to catch up with Brittany Ackerman recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Brittany, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

All of my writing is extremely personal to me, especially when I’m writing fiction. Fiction, more so than essay, has become a place where I can explore some of the acute traumas that have occurred in my life and re-imagine them as a way of processing them. For example, I’ve just finished a draft of a novel that I call my “mall book,” a narrative that follows a mother and daughter as they work alongside each other at a department store in South Florida. The idea for the book stems from a summer where I worked at the very same department store as my mom, a summer when I was experiencing a lot of anxiety and doubt and fear of the future. The mall has always been a place of reprieve for me since I was little, and it felt like the proper setting to land some of the challenges I faced before graduating college and entering the real world.

The book is meaningful to me because I give it meaning. Although the plot in the book didn’t really happen, the emotions behind it did, and having a place to lay those emotions down and let them play out allows me to fashion them into a story, something that feels complete. I think that we have to give our own work meaning. We have to feel purpose as we sweat over composing the work. Who really cares about the mall and someone’s difficult summer? Who wants to read about South Florida and one young woman’s trials and tribulations? I do. I lived it. And now I get to reframe it as something beautiful.

Brittany, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I thought I wanted to be a psychologist until I took a psychology course one summer when I was fifteen. I had to pick two courses for the program and the other one I chose was creative writing. I thought it’d be an easy A, a good supplement to the riveting world of psychology I was entering. But I ended up loving the creative writing class and dreading psychology. It was interesting, but my mind gravitated more toward the free and open space of a blank page rather than memorizing parts of the brain and the names of all the psychological disorders.

When I got to college, I studied English and was able to take a few creative writing workshops, which led me to pursue a graduate degree in creative writing with a focus in creative nonfiction. But after graduating and publishing my first book of essays, The Perpetual Motion Machine (Red Hen Press, 2018), I started writing fiction and fell in love with the craft. I wasn’t sure what career I wanted to go into after earning my MFA, so I took various jobs working as a manager at Abercrombie & Fitch, then transitioned to teaching English at a high school, and then I moved across the country and started waiting tables so I could have more time to write during the day. It was during that period that I completed my novel, The Brittanys (Vintage, 2021), and started looking for a teaching job that would still allow me time to write. I taught at a performing art school for five years until my husband and I moved to Nashville, TN in 2022, where I took a job teaching English at Vanderbilt University. Here, I also help out with the MFA’s Creative Writing program and their Visiting Reader series. It’s been such a fruitful experience so far and has granted me plenty of time and the motivation to continue writing.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

A big lesson I’ve had to unlearn as a writer is that success is linear. I’ve also had to redefine what success means to me, as I think it’s really easy to get caught up in other peoples’ accolades and achievements and feel bad about not being on someone else’s level. The truth is, there are no levels. Even the most brilliant, established, prolific authors still struggle with image and career.

One of my favorite writers, Melissa Broder, said, “It’s only enough when you say it’s enough.” Another one of my writing icons, Sarah Rose Etter, said, “There’s always going to be something you didn’t get that someone else did, and vice versa. You have to be grateful for the things you have and how far you’ve come.”

Unlearning that a writer’s career isn’t up and up and up, but that it’s a rollercoaster of ups and downs, a journey with many peaks and many valleys, has allowed me to see the process as ongoing instead of one day reaching some sort of Mount Olympus. I see success as the willingness and the perseverance to keep writing. Success is that I haven’t grown bitter or tired of writing; I haven’t tapped out. Even in the darkest valley, I still get back up and keep climbing.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

There isn’t one particular example, as I have to use the skill of resilience every time I write. There are always the unwanted, uninvited thoughts that enter my mind as I write, or even before I sit down at my laptop, thoughts of: I’m not good enough, no one will care about my writing so why even bother, this is worthless, useless, pointless. I have to acknowledge those thoughts and continue on anyway.

For me, it’s about holding both these ideas at once, the feeling inadequate and going on despite it. I prove to myself that I can do it by continuing to show up for myself and write. It’s never easy, but I always feel stronger for it.

Every day is an opportunity to be tough and to have the courage to create.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.brittanyackerman.com
• Instagram: suboatmilk

Image Credits
Carl McLaughlin