Staring Down the Abyss: Evan Hulick on Inner Critics, Resilience, and the Long Journey to Story7/2/2026
 In the quiet trenches of a decade-long writing journey, Evan Hulick, Ph.D., has wrestled his epic fantasy manuscript—and himself—into being. A scholar steeped in the traditions of Tolkien’s mythic architecture and Hemingway’s crystalline prose, Evan brings a rare depth to the page: the resilience of a head-on collision survivor, the empathy forged in childhood bullying, and the hard-won wisdom that love is stronger than death. In this candid Q&A, Evan opens up about silencing inner critics, embracing the loneliness of creation, and surrendering to a process that refused to be rushed. Whether you’re battling procrastination, imposter syndrome, or the long haul of a passion project, Evan’s reflections offer both honest struggle and luminous hope for every writer who dares to keep going.  What’s the harshest thing your inner critic has ever said to you? What have you learned to say back to it? EH: “It’s a pile of stinking horse crap.” My answer has always been, “Hold it. Tolkien was stuck in Balin’s Tomb for five whole years, and our literary culture would have been far poorer had C.S. Lewis not convinced “Tollers” to take it up again and not surrender.” Sometimes, I’ll remind myself that J.R.R. Tolkien was a world-renowned philologist; you need to find your own way with your own talent and skills, not aspire for that which you need not be. While I do my due diligence and read more contemporary comps for the commercial market, my writing-aesthetic is generally very different from that approach. I don’t wrestle with “current competition.” I’m often supportive of fellow writers in the industry: Richard Swan's "Grave Empire," Ryan Cahill's, "Of Blood and Fire," Antonia Hodgson's "The Raven Scholar," and John Islington's "The Strength of the Few" among many others. All of that said, my aesthetic preference is to wrestle with the formative influences, those great writers of the past who taught me how to write via my scholarly training; I aim for Tolkien on the epic fantasy structural and thematic side, Ernest Hemingway for the craft of prose. The architecture of a sentence. Which part of yourself feels most exposed or “not enough” when you write, and how do you keep going anyway? EH: That bullied kid in middle school and the head-on collision survivor who could not move in his own body, the part of me that fears unjust criticism, the sort that aims to tear-down a person just to destroy them. The bullied kid I used to be endured prejudice: the bullies thought I was gay, rather than a soft-male. So I grew up with ten years of a confused sense of myself and my own sexuality, and I learned resilience, empathy, and compassion. I learned the value of diversity and acceptance. Yet I also learned to fear others and what “they might say,” a growing imaginary chorus of voices, a whole vision of a self-invented social media controversy. My mind would set-up the “sides of the debates,” inventing whole “flame-wars,” often because real life versions of that would happen, and I’d learn about them. This created a sharp inner critic inside myself as a writer: the sort that would say, “it’s not good enough, you need X, Y, and Z.” What I’ve really come to understand is that it’s an endless parade of self-imposed procrastination built from two great fears: that the book really isn’t all that great, and won’t sell well, and so won’t result in the delightful controversies of our publishing world and that the book will be controversial. This creates quite a conundrum, doesn’t it? A writer fears both becoming famous and yet not being noticed at all. Absurd. What I failed to notice was the third, greatest fear of all: that I would never get past my own invented chorus of critics, and my own worst critic, myself, and that no one could possibly “cancel” me because I had already “cancelled” myself before I could even begin. It’s what makes being a writer both a blessing and a curse; it’s far too easy for me to invent my own no-win scenario plots and then mistake them for reality. We’re prone to running away with our imaginations. In truth, I’ve learned to say, “No” straight back to it. There’s that old Nietzschean saying, “I looked into the Abyss, and it looked straight back at me.” I’d rather say, “I stared-down the Abyss. The Abyss ran away.” In fact, in my first big move, attending the Atlanta Writer’s Conference (AWC) in the first place, I was inspired by a Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 6 episode titled “Tapestry,” where the omnipotent Q (John de Lancie) tells Captain Picard (Sir Patrick Stewart) the following about the timid, risk-averse alternate version of himself: “And no one ever offered him a command. He learned to play it safe. And he never, ever got noticed by anyone.” Additionally, I was inspired by the mental picture of Rocky Balboa, in the original film, having the goal to survive through the fifteenth round as opposed to “winning the fight.” When I was nervous about pitching to an agent, I took both of these mental flashes and turned them into a command [it’s an autistic tick of mine to address myself like a character in a book]: “Evan, all you have to do is go downstairs, and you’ve won. You’ve beaten ten years of procrastination. Your goal isn’t to win, to get a super deal on the first attempt. Get thee downstairs.” It was a wonderful, imaginative way to tackle that inner sense of vulnerability, that sense that once I put my work out into the world, I shall lose control over it, and others will judge it. I just had to learn to make my peace with that. I needed to learn to have faith in my own story to tell itself to the right audience. Have you ever felt ashamed of how long your WIP is taking? What shifted that shame for you? EH: Oh indeed yes. I have been writing my first epic fantasy novel since 2016. I watched it gestate from bad historical fiction into a good epic fantasy. I had to shift perspective, in fact quite recently. Every time I wrote a major sequence, I was often at La Closerie des Lilas – Hemingway’s favorite café in Paris – or somewhere in France, Spain, or Italy, often getting more inspiration. I would sit with my looseleaf pads in Busboys and Poets on Monroe St. NE, Washington D.C., at least during my coursework years in my Ph.D. Program. I eventually helped my colleague Sara co-revive our Catholic University of America English Graduate Organization (EGO- isn’t that cute?) Creative Writing Group, with some rotating leadership and management (that, and typing up my very difficult handwriting got tedious, and so, I used Word and Google Docs more often thereafter). Yet even then, with constructive, positive feedback from my peers, I fixated on my first chapter for years. To be fair, I was also finishing coursework, language requirements, Comprehensive Exams, a dissertation proposal, the drafting phases, the revision phases, and the all-feared Defense. It was a long seven years with a Pandemic in the middle, though it all worked out in the end. One might say is that’s what shifted my perspective. I would scout out locations for me to re-envision into my epic fantasy places and landscapes on Google Maps, and then I would actually visit Paris, follow the Rhône south to Arles and the Camargue and Les-Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer; I would feel the presence of the ancients at the grand aqueduct of Pont du Gard near Nîmes. I would even get a sense of backstory about sequences that ultimately didn’t reach the manuscript but which helped me understand my characters a lot more: Faosta and Zalana’s childhood on the fantasized-version of Biarritz and the Bay of Biscay and the Basque coast. I would pick certain features and places that felt interesting and reimagined my stories nearly to the extent that I could mentally picture my characters in 3D, following in my mind’s eye where they walked, what they said, what they did, etc. It was a singular experience I do not think I could replicate: at least not in the same places. So, in short, TL;DR as they say: I figured out that every single rung of that journey was both necessary and essential for the development of my novels. It was all part of the process. The inner critic, the procrastinator, still needed his sound defeat, however. Yet all of that came in good time. I now at least have one mild consolation: no one can say anything negative about my books, without one little truth; my inner critic got there first (and I often must mentally toss my gnarled, mean-spirited inner critic off the roof of Notre Dame; “Hunchback” fans will get that. Another good analogy is when Glinda tells the original Wicked Witch, “Oh rubbish, you have no power here! Be gone! Before someone throws a house on you!”). To overcome fear in the writer’s journey is a daunting task, and it often is as daunting as you, yourself, make it. You have to learn when to accept your process for what it is. You have to learn when to really call it quits: and that’s when your inner critic “wins.” If you really feel your work is a lost-cause, and you put it down and never return to it, then perhaps that is the case. Yet if you find yourself unable to stop writing it, and keep returning to it: you may have something there.  Learn secrets and proven paths to finding an agent with the book GET A LITERARY AGENT. The guide explains query letter writing, submission dos and don'ts, how to craft engaging opening pages, synopsis FAQs, nonfiction proposal tips, literary agent pet peeves, and much more. What’s the loneliest moment you’ve had as an unpublished writer, and what (or who) helped you through it? EH: “Writing, at its best, is a lonely life,” says Ernest Hemingway in his “Nobel Prize Address / Banquet Speech” (1954), which he won for The Old Man and the Sea. I have often quibbled with Hemingway. After all, I found much solace in my EGO-CWG at Catholic, and now my newer critique groups that I participate in. Yet, in some ways, my greatest joys were also my greatest frustrations as a writer. Here’s what I mean. Walk with me for a moment. Look above. Do you see those arches? Those great, Roman arches, built by hands we will never know? That’s Pont du Gard, towering above you, in southern France. See the way the crystal waters flow over the white stones. Hear them lapping. Imagine the legionnaires, the enslaved persons, the citizens. Hear the awe and the wonder of the children upon seeing this huge aqueduct. It reminded my father of the movie, Jason and the Argonauts (dir. Don Chaffey, 1963), with Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion animation on the Isle of Bronze with the huge statues of the titans. You could swear that Talos could march with his huge bronze boots right from behind that aqueduct. Feel the awe, the wonder, the joy, the exhilaration. Begin imagining your characters in your version of this place. Get the geography right. See her now, Savina, the Lion, leaping against the Shadow. Witness her transformation from a mortal girl into a lion, her courage and her defiance. See and feel the tension. Now take a step back and realize that it’s all, for right now, in your own head. You are alone, by yourself, with these thoughts. You see the vision. Yet how can you possibly express it in a way that would be interesting to others? How can you get them to see what you see, to feel what you feel in that moment? You really are alone, there, in your thoughts. Only you can feel and see it precisely in that way, in that specific moment in time. Language can attempt to approximate it, to try to cobble-together some version of what you felt. But you are alone, in your loneliness, in your awe and wonder that you cannot share. You desperately, desperately, want to share it, for others to perceive it precisely the way you are, right now, in that single, solitary moment. Ah, don’t you feel “old”? *Laughs!* What young person would possibly see something like that? Feel it that way? Maybe the closest one can get (I’m very much not the genius I am about to mention) is Mozart, who somehow expressed it into notes in ways that no one may ever replicate. He saw it all very young, understanding the world that way, expressing it through sound, harmony, rhythm, the voices of the angels. He swam in it all as if it was his nature. I wonder if Mozart ever felt that alone. The mountain peak is an epiphanic place; it is luminous, numinous, and also empty and cold. Though it is a wonderful place to visit. I would say though that the Pont du Gard episode is what I’d name “inspirational loneliness” (plus I wasn’t alone; my dad was with me, and he came up with the Jason and the Argonauts analogy. Now my vision of what my book could do with that place, drawing from that? That’s another story.). Two other moments come to mind: the feeling of printing-out my first draft for the first time, and holding it, with a wee bit of pride, but then realizing only I had it; and then, it’s not a singular moment but a recurrent feeling. Every single time I have to close my manuscript on my PC, it’s the same repetition: “Once again, it exists only here.” It’s the loneliness of not yet having the ability to share it with readers. How has this long writing journey affected your closest relationships (for better or for worse)? EH: I would say that it’s helped me grow in some of my friendships, especially in writing-critique group contexts, and it’s also constrained some others. Usually, what would happen is that someone would have a very specific vision of what they felt I “should be doing,” whether in a work capacity, and we’re talking years ago, or in a scholarly one. Often, a common theme has emerged that one somehow “cannot” do both: be a full-time writer and a full-time academic. Yet that’s a lie; Robert Penn Warren, who wrote All the King’s Men, and a boat-load of other novels and poetry volumes, was a scholar, a critic, a poet, and a writer. He did it all. It’s not impossible. In fact, I owe a ton to H.R. “Stoney” Stoneback, a former President of the International Ernest Hemingway Society. He gave me my foundations. It was Spring 2010 when I took “General Honors English II,” which Stoney (*yes, he’s the one the Jerry Jeff Walker country song called “Stoney” is about) taught as a mid-twentieth century American literature course. He taught us our T.S. Eliot. Imagine close-reading “The Waste Land” as a first-year student. We read Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. He wasn’t afraid to engage us with ideas that some would find challenging in an MA seminar. It was challenging, and it was well worth it. He encouraged me: “And keep writing poetry!” He commented once; he had us write themes and poems. He also loved playing folksongs on his guitar. Once, he taught us ballad meter by singing “The Yellow Rose of Texas” and “Heartbreak Hotel,” and Emily Dickinson’s “When Once I Could Not Stop for Death,” to the tune of “Amazing Grace.” I interpreted everything Stoney taught me literally. While it’s true that I didn’t approach literature in the structural way of an MFA Creative Writing Program, thinking about plot, audience, characterization, in quite that way, I had a different version of it; I never truly just approached the books, plays, and poems as merely objects to be studied. I always approached them from the “if I want to be a writer, I must learn X” craft-perspective. I basically learned the same way Gertrude Stein taught Hemingway how to write: by reading many great writers and then pressing beyond them, toward “that which is beyond attainment” as Hemingway expresses in his “Nobel Prize Banquet Speech.” I also made sure to study Lajos Egri’s “The Art of Dramatic Writing,” which gave me the plot-structure-characterization perspective. So, in this case, writing bonded us together. It gave Stoney and I our greatest pleasures. What do you grieve about the writing life that most people don’t see or talk about? EH: The silence. In some ways, it is a co-grief, shared by the writer and the university professor in me. You long for connection, for joy--- and perhaps, to find your best friend to marry (who isn’t otherwise taken). You long to share what you see with others. Yet, with both careers currently in-flux, it’s difficult to “trust the process” when you feel as if you are looking not toward a proverbial “light at the end of the tunnel” but a darkened void where the light is hidden- and you have to go inside that long, dark cave anyway, hoping to see the other side. You have to trust that the light is there, even if you can’t yet see it. The danger is of moving from project to project to palliate one’s sense of loneliness. It’s at times very delightful for your characters to dwell rent-free inside your own head: and at others, it may test your own sense of self, sanity, reality, and being (usually it’s time to take a walk and get fresh air in those moments!).  Need an expert critique of your query letter, synopsis, novel/manuscript, or nonfiction book proposal? We have you covered. Check out our critique options and many success stories who found literary agents after working with us. At what point did you first allow yourself to call yourself a writer? Did that feel scary or presumptuous? How do you combat those feelings of imposter syndrome when they try to creep up again? EH: Well, to become a writer, I was in a strange spot where I was often discouraged from writing to fit others’ visions of what sort of scholar I *should* be. When I realized I “didn’t want to spend the rest of my life kissing Hemingway’s butt; I wanted to BE Hemingway,” which was my very unwise, 2016-Hulick way of saying, “I want to be a writer,” that was the moment. But I always had a sense of it earlier, when I started writing in 2013 after a “peak experience” in Bosnia-Herzegovina. I felt called to be a writer; it felt, combined with teaching, like my primary vocation in life. It is. But often, I’d tend to let my own sense of worth as a writer get clouded, either by the literary traditions I studied or by various commentaries from scholars. I’d get all caught up in my own head. I’m reminded of a character, Antonin Salieri, from the 1984 film Amadeus (dir. Miloš Forman) or its more recent Starz adaptation mini-series (created by Joe Barton and Julian Farino), whether the meandering mania of F. Murray Abraham’s or the overt menace of Paul Bettany’s performances. I have a very sharp memory for unpleasant moments and experiences, and my unhealthy way of tackling “imposter syndrome” usually involved me falling down some rabbit-holes (it’s an OCD, high-functioning ASD thing). I’d fear my own work was absolute mediocre trash, and on my imposter syndrome would go. I often had to remind myself: if either fantasy-version of Salieri had simply accepted his gifts for what they were, turning to Mozart for inspiration rather than as a source of jealously and hatred, and mostly importantly of all, didn’t get lost inside himself and his own imagined grievances and self-imposed madness: he would have been the real-life Salieri who had mentored many famous composers and didn’t hold a grudge. He would’ve been his true self. So I am now a writer who doesn’t get lost inside himself or fraught with grievances- real or imagined. I reject the false premise: that you have to be Hemingway / Mozart or not write / compose at all. I refuse to envy; to write truly, you must focus on your own vision and remember that it’s all subjective. To write truly and authentically and sincerely is the first and final act of a true writer. What’s one way this manuscript has forced you to face something painful about yourself or your past? EH: Writing my manuscript all along, I had to learn a deeper, harder lesson. I realized two truths: 1) That I can see beyond that narrow Hemingwayan perspective of the world that often neglects empathy and compassion in the right moments; 2) That the sum total of one’s whole life and measure of human value isn’t measured by one single error in behavior; it’s the pattern that matters, the pattern that separates the Mandela’s from the Hitler’s. If I could not forgive others for unpleasant encounters or smaller-scale moments, who could possibly forgive me at my own worst moments? We all have them. We’re not living idols. We’re not gods. We’re human. And loving and enduring the pain when we hurt each other, especially when we love each other, is an intrinsic part of being human. That’s when I really learned how to write: to perceive the contradictions within ourselves and flesh them out, yearning for a hope beyond us. If your value as a writer wasn’t measured by publication, queries, or word count, how would you describe your worth right now? Do you have a personal mantra that helps? EH: Song of Solomon 6:8, which Margaret Atwood quotes in The Testaments (2019): “Love is stronger than death.” What’s my worth right now, as a writer? That I have written characters who have grown beyond me and helped me grow with them, mature with them, and develop as they developed. And they are still growing, as I am; I have more novels to revise! That in itself is its own gift and value. I keep that overall theme at the heart of my mantra; I write to show that love still exists, no matter how many traumatic things happen in the world. I say this as a head-on collision survivor. I want to share that with my readers. What’s a mistake you’ve made in this writing process that you’ve since forgiven yourself for? EH: The sloppy prose when I first started: really middle-school quality, as one poor initial listener at the hotel in Venice got to overhear. I wrote stuff that had some ornate scenery, but some of it was just plain dirty and over-the-top, and I mean “middle school”-level juvenile. I’ve come a long way. I love being able to say that I once handwrote prose on the isle of Burano---though today, I’d write it better, and I’d probably, prudently “fade to black” at certain moments. I’ve often learned that writing metaphorically about love-making is perhaps safer than (yuck!!!). Not all of us have that particular skillset on the page, and sometimes, it’s better to feel something more than it is to imagine it in its details. We have plenty of the latter going around in prose. Looking at the writer you are today versus when you began, what unexpected strength or softness have you discovered in yourself? EH: My resilience to keep going, to not allow that “trenchant old man” I had crafted of myself in my own imagination to win, the metastasis of every criticism I had received or envisioned myself receiving. My softness? My ability to question the strict Hemingway Code, the ideal of the silent sufferer hero: to realize that Rospus didn’t always need Titus barking platitudes about self-courage and grace under pressure at him. Sometimes, he just needed a hug, and to cry, and to let it out, and to be able to become courageous as a result of his tears. Many young men face this crisis today: the idea that softness is a weakness, that women don’t love men who are soft. Well, it seems to me that many women love empathy and compassion, and men should open their hearts to that. Resilience is an inner strength that’s not about showing-off your muscles; it’s about being strong in yourself, in a strength that comes from loving truly. It’s all fine to work-out to be healthy and energetic--- and also, it’s fine to cry, to be emotional, to express yourself fully. It’s an important part of growing wiser. If you could go back and spare your younger writing self from one specific pain on this journey, would you? EH: I am haunted by this question. Would I leave my house that fateful morning, the moment that marked me forever? Would I change anything, such as the manner of my departure? Would I arrive on time? Would the person who crashed into me be dead if I had not been in there as his “metal cushion” between him and the trees? Would I spare myself the 3 years of horror? Well, my mother would; she would want to spare her son for such suffering. No parent wants their child to suffer, no matter how old they are. But if I try to imagine my life without the suffering, how could I teach my students how to endure through it? How could I write authentic characters who really go through it and come out on the other side of it? I am haunted by the road, by those who were not fortunate enough to survive the chopper ride to the T-ICU. I am haunted by the ghosts in my mind. There was a man who had lost both his limbs, and he was happy and joyous to be alive. I remember what it meant. When you dance with death so closely, you appreciate the smaller things. A low-rated tube of Italian ice tastes greater than the finest champagne. Nay, an ice cube, or ice chips, rolling around in your mouth after weeks of not eating or drinking. A wet dab on your tongue. You learn to feel the way the sun shines on you again, how just being outside feels. I learned all of this five years before the Pandemic. You learn how to appreciate the little things. And then I committed an unforgiveable sin. I forgot. I let it fade. I tried to pretend it never happened. And I returned to normal complaints, normal frustrations. I tell you this: there is no greater Hell than normalcy, than complacency. Every year since, I’ve tried to return to that perspective, and to recall to memory that profound gratitude of being alive, and the “earthly concerns” crowd in. I can only speculate that this is also part of being human: that even when we realize a special state or achieved ideal, we can’t maintain it, and so we need a constant remembering. Paradoxically, there was a part of me that wanted to forget, to pretend as if the head-on never happened, and that was the part of me that was at war with my grateful half. That conflict, that sense of inner drama, fueled my writing. The answer is no. I would not spare myself. To wish that you are someone other than yourself denies your true potential. Also, know this: No other species in the state of Nature has ever written a book. We have an ability no one else possesses.  Want to sell more books and market yourself? Check out the guide CREATE YOUR WRITER PLATFORM. The book explains how to build an audience, understand social media basics, sell more books, increase promotion & publicity, get engaged online, and much more. What has this book taught you about patience, surrender, or acceptance? EH: I had to learn to be patient with myself in the process, and especially to disentangle the book, as a book, from my own personal griefs and experiences and traumas---while also surrendering to the fact that its impossible to write outside of oneself----and accepting that. I had to accept the mistakes made in the past, and I had to learn to make better decisions in my own character and behavior. I had to accept everything that happened to me. When you imagine the person you’ll be after this manuscript is truly finished (regardless of publication), what do you hope has changed inside you? EH: A heart more open, more accepting: and also, a thicker skin. I’d like to remind myself that “The Puritans hated Shakespeare.” It’s OK for some people not to like your work, even to hate it. For a book to generate a reaction at all is worth a lot. I’m generally a shy person (unless I’m in the classroom, *winks*). I generally value my own privacy. So, anonymity isn’t the worst outcome of this process, for someone like me. “Fame” would be a sacrifice, and “fame” is less important to me; there are “circles of fame.” There’s so many “famous” people- writers, artists, musicians, poets, playwrights, novelists, etc., I’ve honestly never heard of. I’ve got news: we’re finite. No one can ever read, watch, or listen to everything. What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned about love—love of story, love of self, or love of the work—through this unpublished season? EH: Oh dear me. Responding to these questions has helped show me that I also need to accept and love myself and some facts: 1) That we’re all imperfect as human beings, and we need to learn to love each other anyway, in efforts to prevent the more horrific sorts of things we do to each other (*often far more horrific than overreacting to a late-lunch); 2) that I must forgive myself for my own past mistakes, not beat myself up over them. Like the phoenix, remember that while the fire may go out, it never dies, and something new and beautiful is ever reborn from the ashes. What’s a fear about your writing that you’ve never told anyone before? EH: That my book won’t sell, that all of this hard work and effort will amount to not even to a footnote. I don’t crave fame; in fact, I fear it. I love my privacy. But I would like to see the characters live onward in others’ minds, that they may help others as they helped me---- and most of all, entertain!!! I don’t write for fame or fortune. I write because the story must be finished, even if it ends up buried in a box somewhere like Robert Graves’ frame-narrative for I, Claudius (he pretended to write as if he was copying a real autobiography of Claudius he “unearthed”). If this book remains unpublished forever, what would you need to believe to still feel you had spent your life well? EH: That I saw that remarkable vision of life and place and beauty and character --in the hopes that someone might see it the way I see it someday. What advice would you give new writers chasing their first big break? EH: Don’t be your own worst enemy. Tell your inner critic that “you are the worst jerk I’ll ever encounter, and so I thank you. Now it doesn’t matter what anyone else says to me. The answer is no! I’m not giving up!” Looking back, what’s one choice you made early in your career—about your writing, publishing, or mindset—that you credit for your longevity as an author? EH: Believe in your story. Believe in your tale that only you alone can tell and nobody else. Lean into it. Embrace it. Trust: the rest will follow in its time. Oh, and never, ever use AI. Language prediction is not Art. If you could leave one word of advice for future writers, what would it be? EH: In the immortal words of Captain Taggart (Tim Allen) from the movie Galaxy Quest (1999, dir. Dean Parasot): “Never give up! Never surrender!” Also, be your true self. As Star Trek’s TNG character Q might say, “Don’t play it safe, my dear Jean-Luc. Be the person you are destined to be.”  Evan Hulick, Ph.D, is a Visiting Instructor of English (VI) at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, GA. He graduated with his Ph.D. from The Catholic University of America (CUA) in May 2024 after successfully defending his dissertation titled: "Transcending Genres: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Influence on Narrative Worlds in Ursula K. Le Guin, Margaret Atwood, and Junot Díaz." He had fortuitously received response letters (and/or emails) from both Atwood and Díaz; he is immensely grateful to both authors for their wisdom and guidance. His dissertation was mentored by Dr. Ernest Suarez, then-English Department Chair at CUA, Executive Director of the American Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers (ALSCW). Evan earned his M.A. in English at The State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz in May 2016, and his B.A. in Political Science (theory concentration) at the same institution in May 2013, mentored by Dr. Jeffrey Miller in Political Science, and Dr. H.R. "Stoney" Stoneback, former President of the International Ernest Hemingway Society. He owes very much to his mentors: including his expansive way of seeing the world, of understanding history, philosophy, and literature, and of the never-ending story of understanding his fellow human beings. Evan has been writing fiction since he was ten years old, as well as poetry. His brain is always busy with new ideas and imagining the next plot points for his characters. He has traveled extensively to Ireland, the UK, Italy, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, France, Germany, and Spain, as well as across the continental U.S. He is always seeking more inspiration. He has a zany sense of humor, a frenetic mind, and often questions his own sanity. Isn't that wonderful?  This post was complied by Brandy Vallance, a literary agent with Barbara Bova Literary Agency, an award-winning author, and Executive Aide for Writing Day Workshops. Brandy is the winner of two national writing awards, one of which included a $20,000 prize. Her novel, THE COVERED DEEP, has been featured in USA Today & Writer’s Digest. WITHIN THE VEIL has been called “passionate and riveting” and Publisher’s Weekly encourages those who like sweeping Scottish sagas to dive in because “the journey is wonderful.” Brandy loves helping writers break the chains of fear and self-doubt. You can find out more at brandyvallance.com.  Pitch Agents at a Writers Conference in 2026:
Check Out Other Great WDW Articles & Resources:
Comments are closed.
|