Creator Feature: Jessica Manack
- Melissa
- Mar 19
- 9 min read
I really get to meet the coolest, creative people. Jessica Manack is one of those people. Her poetry collection Gastromythology just stunned me, for its craft, yes, but perhaps more so for how it gives voice to many of the experiences I've had, and seen other women have, in our culture relating to the body, heteropatriarchy, womanhood, food, desire, and where all those forces crash into each other. After the interview with Jessica, scroll to read two poems: "The Guts of '80s Kids" and "Perilous Figures."
For those who don't know you yet, introduce yourself.
JM: I’m a writer who lives in the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with my husband and two kids. We’re 5 minutes from downtown, but live near a run (we don’t say “holler” here, but it is) where herds of deer rule the roads and turkeys attack my car every time I drive to work. I love being so close to both cultural stimulation and undeveloped green spaces. I studied creative writing in college, but became detached from writing as I worked to pay my student loans and start a family. The pandemic, shaking up everything as it did, led to my losing my job and giving me the kick in the pants to write and publish. I just published my first chapbook at the age of 44, a fact that might have made impatient, 20-year-old Jessica sad, but it feels like everything is happening on its own perfect timeline.
What do you create?
JM: I am a writer who works in poetry and creative nonfiction. Fiction as a working form has never called to me – I think because it seems that real life has so much to explore, though I am intrigued by the recent trend of autobiographical novels, which show me that fiction can be a useful device through which we can present a version of the truth, perhaps a truth that many share, as in, say, Demon Copperhead.
Of course, it’s interesting with poetry, because no one asks you to classify it into fictional or non-fictional. It’s often assumed to be the latter, but there’s always some room to tell things a little slant. I do write heavily from my life, as a record, but some tales may present a combination of events, or imagined events.
Why are you drawn to these mediums/subjects?
JM: Words have always called to me. I did not grow up in a bookish family, but my grandfather, early on, cultivated my love of language. He came from a coal mining family in southwestern Pennsylvania, but worked very hard to get out, so he didn’t have to work in the mines as a small child, like his father and uncle. He sent me Shel Silverstein’s poetry books, whose weirdness set the tone for my entire creative life, when I was very small, and wrote me letters including newspaper clippings of interesting facts, and comical, rhyming poems. I don’t think he would have called himself an artist, but he worked hard on creative projects, like these photo albums of his dogs, impeccably laid out with humorous captions, which showed me how creative pursuits could enrich our lives.
How did you get to this point in your artistic/writing journey?
JM: I did study Creative Writing in college. I got a B.A. and M.A. back-to-back. The thing about an M.A. is that one doesn’t often teach afterwards, so, for those looking to remain in education, the M.F.A. makes more sense. I studied Creative Writing because it was what I felt I did best and liked best, but I struggled to know what to do to make a living after school, because being a teacher felt daunting for someone who struggles to address a crowd. I felt lost for a number of years, as I worked in corporate communications, in a way that left no mental energy over for organizing words. Coming back to writing later in life, I felt fortunate, as I had so much perspective from becoming a parent and now seeing my place as a family chronicler.
My husband bought me a registration to an online, asynchronous writing course from Creative Nonfiction for my birthday in 2018, while I was on my second maternity leave. At first I thought: What?? There’s no way. But then I started to wonder if I could make it work. Interestingly, though babies require so much care, there’s such a clearing-away of some parts of life that taking care of babies brought a mental reset for me. Being “nap-trapped” gave me more time to read than I had had in years, and I was no longer commuting, and running from meeting to meeting. So it was a creative rebirth, as well as the birth of a new me. I also then felt the urge to write down the story of my life in a way I hadn’t before, so my children could know who I was and who made me. My grandmother died from an aggressive cancer that left her unable to talk by the time we made it down to Florida for our last visit, and I inherited a huge trove of ancestral material that she had not had the chance to frame for me with any sort of context. I’ve spent the last nearly two decades piecing together what I can. My ancestors were fascinating, but, for whatever reason, no one passed their lore down to us. I had to go and find it. I don’t want their lives to be lost to time.
Tell us about Gastromythology, the focus on women, bodies, food, appearances, all that patriarchal pressure.
JM: I didn’t set out to Write A Book, but wrote as much as I can for a couple of years, and then saw a collection taking place through the common theme, primarily of feeding and being fed, not only by food, but by nature, or desire, or adventure. The notion of being bound to someone else’s ideas of what women can or can’t do is something that is so hard to shuck off, even when you’re cognizant of the fact that you’re operating in outdated mindsets that should be left behind. Women are often expected to maintain a certain physical figure, but then pregnancy and nursing is a phase when one can embrace the desire to be fully fed, though it’s also looked down upon to get too used to that – there is the expectation of getting “back to normal,” and soon.
I am very afraid of what we are starting to witness under an administration that shuns equal platforms for all people, including those so long marginalized. I’ve seen alarming reports of the contributions of women being scrubbed from the websites of scientific institutions. What is next? The new work I’m creating continues to explore what choices women make in service of living their instincts, even when agency might have looked like being a very hands-off mother, as in my poem, “The Smallest Town in Maryland.”
You also did the cover of the book. Tell us about that.
JM: I studied at Hollins University in Roanoke, VA, which has a wonderfully interdisciplinary approach to learning. I majored in English and Spanish, but also took a lot of art history courses. I had been collecting vintage magazines for years, and for my final project for the course Art and Literature of Britain, I made a series of collages from vintage women’s magazines, to illustrate the Christina Rossetti poem “Goblin Market.” When I began preparing my book for publication, over 20 years later, I realized that the collages spoke to the theme perfectly. Actually, I didn’t know anything about archival materials, then, and I made the collages with rubber cement, and it’s a little miraculous that it didn’t eat through the paper as it has some other artworks I made in that period.
I am grateful that Hollins, early in my life, gave me the perspective to know that everything should blend together – art, and work, and hobbies, and living. Hollins gave me mentors like Cathy Hankla and Jeanne Larsen, who showed me, and continue to show me, how to fit creativity into a long life with different phases, sometimes shifting to work in one form over another. Sometimes I feel like Hollins is a well-kept secret, but I hope that we can keep sending generations of artistic misfits there.
Is there anything else you’d like to say?
JM: For a long time, I believed that the goal was to work and work on your pieces, and then send the best ones to the top-tier journals and presses. So few pieces make it to those rarified spaces every year. I found so much more publishing success and community when I started trying to publish with small presses. I was lucky to have a piece selected in Kari Gunter-Seymour’s Women Speak anthology in 2021 – one of the ones I wrote in that Creative Nonfiction class – which introduced me to Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, which became the home for my book when I won one of their publication contests. I can’t say enough good things about working with Hayley Haugen. She is such a champion of the work she publishes, and I feel like I’m part of a family, being at her press.
I have also been so pleased to find so many conferences and events happening in our region and beyond. From the Appalachian Writers' Workshop and other programs at the Hindman Settlement School, to Lit Youngstown, Winter Wheat, and the Amesville Writers Workshop in Ohio, and things further afield like the New Orleans Poetry Festival, there are so many ways out there to kickstart new work, share, get feedback, and get inspired, even without going through a formal educational program. Any of those events can fill one up with new ideas to take home and explore for months. I feel really lucky to live in the time and place that I do.
Where can we find you and your work?
JM: I frequently update my personal website, including recent work, and upcoming appearances – this year I am hitting the road as much as possible and would love to meet readers, and hear from local folks when the reading includes an open mic afterwards. I love it so much when someone gets on stage for the very first time to share their words. Playing with paper is a lifelong love – when I have time, I love making and sending weird mail, which I sporadically log here. These days, I’m feeling like offline connection is a good direction to move toward. See you on the page!
----------TWO POEMS----------
THE GUTS OF ‘80S KIDS
Our Tanged intestines sparkle. We survived,
guts Gonzo Graped and Purplesaurus Rexed.
No one had heard of Yellow Number 5.
Our mothers always tried to do their best.
But, Man-O-Mangoberry! I dyed my hair
with Kool-Aid once. It took a year to fade —
Rock-a-dile Red, the stubbornest flare,
a sunset more perfect than any any god made.
So now they gleam, our innards perma-rainbowed:
the Great Blue-dini spleen, heart Sharkleberry.
Our kidneys blush a darling Pink Swimmingo,
nothing Kansas-bland, no lime, no cherry;
they are my buried treasure, hidden wealth.
A bright inside for an outside beige and pasty.
We were not only feeding, but preserving ourselves —
our wrinkles like Fruit Wrinkles, ageless and tasty.
Originally published in Maudlin House
PERILOUS FIGURES
Girls are finally reclaiming mathematics,
et us rejoice, doing columns of sums
for fun, tallying, multiplying, leaving boys
in the dust, calorie counters of the world unite!
Girls are doing it right now, those smoking motors,
showing us how to run on spit and fire, on zeroes,
showing us what sort of empires the silent form.
Auto-makers, engineers, take heed:
these geniuses of consumption show us
how to go-go-go on nothing at all, how to maximize
miles per gallon, minimizing everything else.
At once girls are saints and hurricanes:
performing miracles, feeding two thousand
with one loaf, turning disgust to combustion,
moving steadily, messes of blurry lines and aerobic activity.
Deeming their silhouettes happy accidents,
not carefully crafted works of art and violence,
girls brandish their bodies at the world
as though there is nothing obscene
in having swords for collarbones,
as though there is nothing hostile
in sharpening the knives of their ribs.
Girls cannot exist outside of facade,
claiming that they already ate, that they're
late, that they're too busy to eat, too full
already of appointments and spite.
Girls lie to the world that lies to them first,
whispering: here is an allotment to do with
as you wish, belonging only to you,
no one wrangling it from your hands,
appraising it with lust you don't understand,
sullying it without your consent.
Girls relish the last laugh, they know what goes,
what's chaff; they know what they're doing,
how near sunlight can get to bone.
Girls know how to pare. Girls know when to stop,
how to find the statue hidden under all that stone.
Originally published in If and Only If
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