The Work Room Interview: Meredith Talusan on General Writing for (Recovering) Academics

Interview by Cheyenne Paterson

CP: I’d love if you could expound upon the title of this class. Who exactly is the recovering Academic? What will allow for the transition from recovery to fully healed in the realm of academia? 

MT: "Recovering academic" is mainly a cheeky reference to some of the bad habits academics and former academics develop after spending many years working in a specialized field with many terms and concepts that people outside of that field are unfamiliar with. This includes overcomplicated language, not paying attention to the aesthetic properties of their prose, and having a hard time gauging the audiences they're writing for, aka reading the room. I've been there and I can help! I'm not sure if any recovering academic can ever be fully healed—let's call it long-academia—but any recovering academic can take steps to mitigate the academy's negative effects on their general-audience writing.

CP: Some may find the anonymity in writing for the general audience to be a hindrance in creativity or inspiration. Was this an obstacle for you? If so, how did you overcome it? 

MT: I started out writing opinion pieces related to transgender issues (despite my academic field being postcolonial literature), and I guess my audiences were defined enough that I didn't feel that sense of anonymity. But whenever I find myself having trouble defining the audience for my work, I always try to imagine a person in my life who represents that audience, and also envision my writing as an email to them when I find it getting too complicated.

CP: As a writer and now instructor, when in your journey did you start to realize there was an evolution occurring with respect to academics and general public writing? 

MT: My involvement with encouraging academics to write for the public has spanned more than a decade, ever since I became a managing editor at ARCADE, a project at Stanford headed by the amazing professor Roland Greene that aims to bring scholarly work to broader audiences. In that role, I corresponded with many academics about how to make their work more accessible. But it was really when I started writing for general-audience outlets that I became aware of how valuable my academic training has been in terms of breaking down complex social issues from Caitlyn Jenner coming out to trans parenting to trans-related violence, yet also how much I needed to learn how to reach audiences who don't have my academic background. I'm hoping this workshop can shortcut that process for other people.

CP: With an emphasis on generality, how does one navigate the discovery of their own personal style without losing the universal appeal to a piece? 

MT: For me it's going back and forth between conscious and unconscious learning, constantly reading and taking notes about aspects of writing I'm drawn to that I can then apply to my own work. But when it's actually time to produce a piece of writing, I let those conscious efforts go and trust myself to be able to apply my studies unconsciously, only reflecting on the effectiveness of the work once I'm in editing or revision.