Mirri is currently a PhD student in Creative Writing at the University of Strathclyde
Tell us a little bit about your background..
I’ve published pretty widely in short fiction back in America and received my MFA in Fiction Writing from Virginia Tech in 2019. I had also received an award for Fiction from Intro to Journals and a Pushcart nomination.
What drew you towards undertaking a research degree?
The time that a PhD gives you to truly focus on your craft in a novel is exemplary and I was curious about gender studies research in regards to female writers in fiction. When I encountered Nan Shepherd’s work The Living Mountain it struck me as such an amazing piece of mountaineering literature and nature writing—it is far beyond its time. The gender-minimized approach in the point-of-view to the Cairngorms is particularly interesting and makes the work inclusive in a way other works of its time (and many today) are not. I wanted to spend time investigating Shepherd’s work as well as creating a longform creative piece on my own that I could seek to publish as Upmarket fiction.
Tell us about the format of the programme. What is a typical working week like?
What I’ve loved most about the Creative Writing PhD at Strathclyde is the openness of the format of the program. I’ve worked very much at my own pace and my advisors have been very accommodating. When I made the decision to work at double pace over the last six months of the degree, they kept their schedules flexible for reading and kept up with me—even when I was making 10,000-word monthly submissions. I schedule my own time so I typically spend eight-hour days writing and reading, then teaching Creative Writing to third years for the department once a week. The highlights for me would be receiving a ‘Notable Essay’ from Best American Essays over a creative nonfiction piece I wrote that is linked to my thesis, and publishing my short story ‘Coire Reidh’ in the prestigious American literary journal Ploughshares. The possibilities of such a flexible schedule with my advisors coupled with the intensity of focus demanded to complete the thesis and programme, helped fuel me to create and publish works even outside of my main creative project. Their feedback has been really key in the development of the novel itself as well, and looking over my whole thesis now as I prepare to head into the Viva fills me with a remarkable sense of pride. Just seeing it all in one document, polished and ready, is quite a highlight.
Tell us a little bit about the research you are conducting..
My PhD thesis is comprised of a fiction novel which concerns itself with two sisters finding the space for self-acceptance in the natural world and an accompanying critical reflection on Nan Shepherd’s structuring of the Cairngorms in The Living Mountain as an inclusive space outwith gender. The creative novel takes place on the backdrop of Southeast Alaska. As children, Adeline and Jane Roan discovered another world without other people and comprised of endless mountains, the door to which only opens during meteor showers. They named it Meteora. When Jane and her boyfriend, Sean, are on a climbing trip, Sean falls to his death and Jane wakes up to find herself alone on a mountain ridge in Meteora. Rather than face what has just happened, she rejects the regular world and decides to remain. Adeline travels deep into the wilderness of Taku River Valley during the Perseids to find Meteora and save her sister, unaware of the struggles in identity and their relationship that it will define. The critical reflection examines Shepherd’s structuring of the Cairngorms as an inclusive space in The Living Mountain through her use of gender-minimization in both pronouns and description, and how this thematically relates back Jane and Adeline’s experiences of Meteora in the fiction novel. The final chapter of the critical concerns itself with my discovery of The Living Mountain at the time of beginning the novel, how Shepherd’s work came to influence it, and my own experience with the natural world as an inclusive place for a solo female walker.
What is the research community at Strathclyde like?
I found a lot of solidarity in my cohort once Covid restrictions started to lift. It’s also been really wonderful to attend and read work at department sponsored events and readings. Since my work is relatively solitary, it’s been up to me to choose how much I want to participate in the greater research community or be in contact with my cohort. The flexibility in that suits me, as I am not as social a person as others might be. I’ve found the community to be very supportive though when I interact with them. Another member of my cohort with similar critical research interests to me started a podcast recently and invited me on as a guest and it was really wonderful to be a part of that. Much of my involvement when I’ve had it has necessitated me to be the one to reach out, but if I did, I get the feeling there would be a lot of support and reaching back from others.
What are your future career goals?
I am querying for the novel right now and it has complete manuscript requests currently with multiple literary agents, one in London and four in New York. It is my hope in the next six months or so that an offer will come out of that. Once I have an agent, we can begin submitting the novel to publishers. I would like to have both the novel and my short story collection have homes with publishing houses in the next few years. Without the programme at Strathclyde the manuscript and the time it took to write it wouldn’t exist, so the completing the degree is invaluable to me. The close attention and dedication of my advisors to my critical and creative vision has been a force of nature, inspiration, and morale in a field that’s very difficult to break into.
What advice would you give to someone considering applying for this course?
Be sure you know what you want to get out of it going in and how to manage your time. Flexibility fosters the most growth, but you do have to create your own structure, so focus is a must. Know what you want! That said, don’t be afraid to let the project evolve as you do, it is natural for research ideas and creative works to change and develop over a few years. If you’re in this, you should be in it for the time it gives you to make something truly incredible, and the creation itself must be the product and goal. You have to love it.