Spring 2019
“I wrote very problematic things for someone so sheltered and young, so my mother had to frequently quiz me about whether I was doing okay. But hey, it’s all worked out — I’m now an adult who writes very problematic things, hell yeah,” said Neeraja “Neeru” Nagarajan, a student getting her master’s in creative writing fiction.
The BGSU first-year graduate student knew she wanted to find a career in creative writing when she was only 10 years old. The Chennai, India, native is tall with dark, curly, chin-length hair and deep brown eyes. Since her first story, she has written much more and has gotten several pieces published, some in English and some in Tamil, her native language.
“One of my short Tamil novels got published when I was 17. I learned a lot about how to build a story, create scenes, make the characters feel real. In college, I wrote brief humorous essays in Tamil,” Nagarajan said.
While Nagarajan has always had a knack for creative writing, she actually began her career in engineering and software design. Her father had wanted one of his children to lead the life of an engineer, and neither one of her two brothers wanted to follow in those footsteps.
“I had to become an engineer before I did anything else. That did influence my career path, but I don’t regret a single minute of it. I draw a lot from my engineering life for my creative life. (My father and I) bonded over that time and became much, much closer,” Nagarajan said with a smile.
When she isn’t writing, Nagarajan can be found singing jazz for her secret SoundCloud page, cooking and baking,watching and reading anime and manga and volunteering.
“I volunteered at LibriVox.org, where I read and coordinated audiobook projects of books in the public domain. I also volunteer at a popular anime/manga website, where I supervise a whole lot of editors and writers who are trying to put out original synopses for anime and manga. It’s a great job that requires me to mentor and build a community. I love it,” she stated.
Within her time in the MFA program at BGSU, Nagarajan has become very close with the other fiction first-years. There are only four of them and they take each class together. The group has spent nearly every day with each other since August.
“Neeru is genuinely a kind, fun and thoughtful person,” MFA candidate in fiction and Nagarajan’s office mate Alise Miller said. “I feel like our friendship started off pretty soon after we met; we would chat and talk about anime.
She’s a very extroverted person and I’m very introverted.
I’m really pessimistic in certain aspects of my life where she’s very optimistic and she’s very pessimistic about things I’m optimistic about.
We have this weird opposite thing and we mesh because of that.”
In order to be an MFA at BGSU, there are some requirements, such as teaching general writing studies and presenting a piece of work at the Thursday night Prout Chapel reading series. Finding the right MFA school was tricky for Nagarajan, but she was able to narrow it down.
“I yearned for a community of writers I could work with and learn from. I decided I was going to apply [at BGSU] quite on a whim, so I’m glad I was impulsive! Also, the idea of writing in a small town amidst a small cohort really is perfect for me,” she said.
Another member of the cohort is Aryana Falkner, MFA candidate in fiction, and she has also gotten close with Nagarajan since the beginning of the program back in August.
“Our first class for Techniques of Fiction, we were asked to bring in a short story we really liked, and [Neeru and I] brought in the same story,”
Falkner said. “The most profound thing that I have learned here at this program and from Neeru was when where we were having a discussion in one of our classes about writing things you don’t know.
But, if somebody genuinely cares and does research and does their absolute best, while acknowledging their privilege to represent somebody else, a different group of people, that’s okay.”
As for the teaching aspect of the program, Nagarajan didn’t know what to expect. She was nervous, but eventually overcame that.
“I’ve always enjoyed teaching and talking to young students. One of my biggest obstacles was that I’m not familiar with the system here. What did a 30-year-old Indian woman and a class of freshly-minted adults have in common? It was hard figuring all that out, but I’m managing great and I love connecting with my students,” Nagarajan said.
The future can be a mystery for creative writing students, some may have a plan and other ways just go where the wind takes them. But either way, they want writing to be a part of that future and that’s all they could hope for.
“On the surface: I want to write and get published. But if you dig a little deeper: I just want to tell good, memorable stories,” Nagarajan said. “There’s really no 5-year or 10-year plan, honestly; I just want to live a fulfilling life, and if that continues to include writing, that would make me so, so happy.”
