Blackbird ArchivePathogen: Gestation of an Idea
Pathogen: Gestation of an Idea
I envy writers who are forever in the thick of creation, producing work out of a combination of talent, inspiration, and sheer effort. For me, stories are few and far between, slipped in between academic articles, yet just as weighty in my mind. I suppose it’s not surprising how often my research in women’s writing and the medical humanities seeps into my stories. I recall researching small waves of infectious diseases, like syphilis and the plague, which threatened population centers in the eighteenth century. It was at this time the image of the plague started rattling around in my head.
As an Arizona native, I knew that Yersinia pestis , the bacteria that causes the plague, is endemic to the Northern Plateaus. I became haunted by an image of bacteria, floating freely in bloodstreams, a nod to our evolutionary fear of contagion. The bacteria became a sort of character for me, devoid of the emotion and desire that motivates a traditional human character. The plague was both the story’s gestational image and the vehicle with which to express protagonist Elizabeth Burt’s emotional impotence.
Of course when one thinks of the plague, one immediately thinks of delicious baked goods. Maybe. No? In any case, the entry of vegan baking found its way into “The Joy of Baking” in a practical way—my loyal and forever love affair with cupcakes. The sensory pleasure of freshly baked bread, cupcakes, and scones represents the perfect balance of scientific precision and the inexplicable longing for family and community—an emotional thread I didn’t realize I was trying to pluck until well after the final scene.
Joshua Bennett’s poems have been published in Callaloo, The Collagist, Drunken Boat, Tupelo Quarterly, and Tidal Basin Review, among others. He was the winner of the 2014 Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize (Backbone Press), and in 2010 he received a Predoctoral Fellowship from the Ford Foundation. He also received fellowships from the Center for the Study of Social Difference at Columbia University and the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. Bennett, who is a doctoral candidate in the English Department at Princeton University, is the founding editor of Kinfolks: a journal of black expression. Photo by Eve Ewing
Anders Carlson-Wee’s work has been published or is forthcoming in New England Review , The Missouri Review , The Southern Review , and Best New Poets , among others. He has received a 2015 Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a 2014 Literary Award in poetry from Ninth Letter , and the 2014 Matt Clark Editors’ Choice Prize in poetry from New Delta Review . Carlson-Wee has received scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, as well as the Bread Loaf Bakeless Camargo Residency Fellowship. He is currently an MFA candidate at Vanderbilt University. Photo by Kai Carlson-Wee
Michelle E. Iwen earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Arizona State University and earned a PhD in Critical and Cultural Theory from Cardiff University. Her academic work has appeared in gender forum and Assuming Gender . She is the assistant director of educational and research programs for the Origins Project at Arizona State University and also teaches creative writing at ASU. Photo by Anindya Raychaudhuri
Celeste Lipkes’ poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Rattle , Smartish Pace , Bellevue Literary Review , and Unsplendid , among others. Her poem “Victor” received a second-place William Carlos Williams prize in 2014, and she has been an artist-in-residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Lipkes earned her MFA in poetry from the University of Virginia and is pursuing an MD from Virginia Commonwealth University. Photo by Jeff Lipkes