Editorial Intern

Aerin Ellard is a fourth year student at Fordham University, where she is studying English and Psychology. When she isn’t in class or reading slush pile submissions, Aerin serves as an undergraduate assistant at Fordham’s Compulsive Obsessive Anxiety Program Lab. She has conducted independent research examining perceptions of ideological difference and social class among American academics and undergraduate students. Apart from her own practice as a writer, she is interested in how language functions in contemporary political extremism, as well as how creative writing practices can be used to address sociopolitical conflicts. Spanning literary and empirically-oriented spaces, Aerin’s work is best described as an interdisciplinary exercise in narrative capabilities. In the words of critic A.S. Byatt, she believes that “narration is as much a part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood.” 

With regard to her literary tastes, Aerin is drawn to work that takes risks at the formal level without sacrificing coherency. She is a fervent fan of the close third-person perspective, well-crafted dialogue, and sentences that showcase the musicality of language. Most of all, she appreciates literature that demonstrates intention; in other words, work that defies convention in pursuit of meaning, as opposed to the thrill of disobedience. Aerin’s own writing is predominantly non-fiction; she is currently working on a collection of essays that explore memory, grief, and belonging in young womanhood. 

Some of Aerin’s favorite books as representative titles include Marguerite Duras’ The Lover, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Magda Szabó’s The Door, Sylvia Plath’s Ariel, Jean Toomer’s Cane, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, and Sophocles’ Antigone.

---