Arts
In this episode, I speak with Danielle Geller about her essay that appeared in The New Yorker. The piece uses the unique form of an annotated dictionary to tell the story of her relationship with her mother and the Navajo language. We discuss the form she chose, the inspiration for and evolutions of the essay, and how feedback fueled her creative process. Danielle Geller is a writer of personal essays and memoir. Her first book, Dog Flowers, is forthcoming from One World/Random House in 2020. She received her MFA in Creative Writing, Nonfiction at the University of Arizona and is a recipient of the 2016 Rona Jaffe Writers’ Awards. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Brevity, and Arizona Highways Magazine and has been anthologized in This Is the Place (Seal Press, 2017). She is a member of the Navajo Nation: born to the Tsi’naajinii, born for the bilagaana. To keep up with Danielle and to read her pieces available online, including the essay we discuss in this episode, visit her website at https://daniellegeller.com.