Inside Surrender: Love, Loss, and Life on a Goat Farm

Summary:

Jennifer Acker, founder and editor-in-chief of The Common and director of the Amherst College LitFest, joins Dr. Lisa Belisle on Radio Maine to explore how place, storytelling, and personal transformation shape both literature and life. Raised in rural Maine, Acker reflects on how her early experiences—family reading traditions, small-town culture, and global travel—deeply informed her commitment to place-based writing. She shares the origin story of The Common, a literary magazine dedicated to capturing the nuances of place across the world, and discusses her upcoming novel Surrender, inspired in part by her family farm and the emotional complexities of midlife change.

From goats and farming to identity, aging, and unexpected love, Acker offers a thoughtful perspective on how stories help us understand ourselves and others.

Join our conversation with Jennifer Acker today on Radio Maine—and be sure to subscribe to the channel.

Title Options:

Goats, Grief, and Reinvention: A Writer’s Journey Back Home

Why “Place” Matters: Inside Jennifer Acker’s New Novel Surrender

The Power of Place in Storytelling | Jennifer Acker on Radio Maine

Midlife, Identity, and Starting Over: A Conversation with Jennifer Acker

How a Maine Childhood Shaped a National Literary Voice

What Happens When You Return Home? Jennifer Acker Explains

Inside Surrender: Love, Loss, and Life on a Goat Farm

Building The Common: A New Vision for Literary Storytelling

Why Stories Connect Us Across Place and Time

Social Media Caption:

What does it mean to return home—and who do we become when we do?

Author and The Common founder Jennifer Acker joins Radio Maine to explore the power of place, the pull of storytelling, and the courage it takes to change your life. From growing up on a Maine farm to writing her new novel Surrender, this conversation weaves together identity, creativity, and connection in a deeply human way.

🎧 Watch / listen now and step into a story that feels both intimate and universal.

\#RadioMaine \#JenniferAcker \#TheCommonMagazine \#MaineWriters \#Storytelling \#CreativeLife \#PlaceBased \#NewEnglandVoices \#WritersOfInstagram \#PodcastRelease

Dr. Lisa Belisle (00:10):

Hello, I'm Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to or watching Radio Maine, our video podcast where we explore and celebrate creativity and the human spirit. Today I have with me Jennifer Acker, who is the author, founder, and editor-in-chief of The Common magazine, also the director of the Amherst College Lit Fest, and will be soon debuting her second novel coming up in April called Surrender. I'm very excited to have this conversation with you today. Thanks for coming in.

Jennifer Acker (00:38):

Thanks for having me. Very happy to be here.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (00:40):

As somebody who also grew up in Maine, you grew up in Maine and somebody who also has a love of books and writing and literature. I love that you have this background that sort of catapulted you into this whole area of interest that you've continued to grow and foster and make your own, this literary approach to your profession. So it's wonderful to see because that's sometimes when things don't exist, we tend to believe that they will never exist, but you've kind of created something new and special, I think.

Jennifer Acker (01:15):

Thank you. Thank you. Yes, that's right. Well, I was a library kid and so Lithgow Library in Augusta was my library. And I remember all the summer reading programs and getting my gold stars when I finished the book. And I was also fortunate to have family who are readers. My grandparents were big readers. Everyone read aloud to me, my grandmother, my cousins, my father, everyone. So it was a family that valued reading, which is very lucky to grow up in and really encouraged me to read and write as did my teachers in elementary school and all the way through. And not that I knew I was going to be a writer, I just knew that I loved writing and I always wanted to be involved in that world. I did have other passions. I had a wonderful biology teacher in high school. I thought for a while I would be a biologist, but when I got to college, I found myself freely focusing on writing and then trying to figure out what kind of life can you make as someone who loves books?

(02:21):

Like what directions are there? And I explored some of them. I worked in publishing. I worked in various magazines, so both book publishing and magazine publishing. And then there came a time in my life when I needed to do something different. And so I started a literary magazine.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (02:39):

Well, talk to me about that. Again, starting something from nothing. I mean, that's a really big deal. And you're not just starting a magazine, you're starting a magazine where the curation and the sort of the overarching narrative is particularly important and very personal to you. So I just want to hear a little bit more about that journey.

Jennifer Acker (03:00):

So the magazine was founded with the intention to publish literature and some art, but mostly short stories, poems, essays that have a strong sense of place. So where did that passion come from? It came from my upbringing. It came from growing up in Maine. I was very cognizant as a kid. So I'm the only real Mainer in my family. My parents are from away. My grandparents did not grow up here, even though we have a connection to Maine going back to the 1930s, but I was the Mainer and it was very clear to me how growing up in a small town in Maine affected my life and sort of what that meant. And I was cognizant of accents and how people speak in Maine and how we see the world and the kinds of things that we're interested in and the opportunities available to us.

(04:09):

And all of those things are very particular to small towns and to Maine, but also every person who grows up has those details attached to them, but it depends on where you grew up. So if you grew up in Minneapolis, it's going to be a different set of interests and accents and worldviews. And so when I had the opportunity to start a magazine, that was the lens through which I noticed that I was seeing literature, both as a reader and as a writer. And I thought it was kind of unfortunate that this idea of sense of place was sort of limited to thinking about Southern writers. Like you think of Faulkner and Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor, and those people seem to have sort of cornered the market on sense of place, but that's not true. We all come to the party with some sense of our origins.

(05:04):

And even if you are an immigrant or someone who is displaced or has moved around a lot, I think place is still very relevant to our human journey. So I wanted to explore that through literature. So I sort of married a couple of my interests.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (05:22):

Well, I'm glad that you explained that because when I learned about this idea of place-based writing, it automatically sent me in a direction of Robin Wall Kimmerer and "Braiding Sweetgrass"

(05:33):

And sort of the natural world sense of place. And what you're describing really is more in the Elizabeth Strout sort of sense of Maine place. And we have other, I mean, Stephen King is another one that his is a very specific genre, but I mean, it's a very different ... When you talk about, it sounds like more kind of people place, kind of people, culture, community, which is a very different kind of community than the natural world, an intersection, but different.

Jennifer Acker (06:02):

I think they overlap quite a bit. And I think the natural world has a very large influence on those things that I was just talking about. Whether you grew up by the ocean or you grew up inland or you grew up in a mountainous place or it's very dry or it's humid or you have mosquitoes or black flies or whatever it is in your natural environment, that helps to shape culture. And so I think all of these things are very interconnected.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (06:30):

And I love this idea too, because you're right. I mean, I grew up on the coast. I came back to where I grew up here in Yarmouth. I'm a little bit closer to the coast because now I'm on an island before I was in town Yarmouth, but still in town is only like 10 minutes away from the water. But where you grew up in Maine, your sense of coast was a little bit more distant and really what you were dealing with from a natural world standpoint was more interior Maine. And that does have a different ... What people do for a living, how they spend their time, how they respond to their environment, even though you're literally 45 minutes apart, it can be an incredibly different experience in life.

Jennifer Acker (07:16):

Yeah. Well, and place can be a very small marker. It could be ... And we think about this a lot when we are selecting and editing pieces for the magazine, is that people often say, "Well, I'm writing a story about growing up in Texas." Does that count? Of course it does, but it depends on how you've written it. So you can think of a place as being as small as this room, you can think of a place as being as large as the state or as large as the country. And so I think you get to set the parameters about what is important to you, but you're absolutely right that we have a lot of diversity of communities in Maine and just like everywhere else. But it matters whether you grew up in land or you grew up on the coast or you grew up in Prescott or in Portland.

(08:10):

So there's just a big difference.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (08:13):

I'm so interested in this because I just had a conversation with somebody and I wish I could remember who it was. They were saying, "I love books that are written by Maine authors about Maine, but I have friends who will never read about Maine by Maine authors or really anybody else, but they don't want to read about Maine because it's not their experience." Whereas I like to read about it because it may not be my experience, but sometimes it is a little bit my experience. Maybe it's my patient's experience or my grandparents' experience. But I just finished Monica Wood's latest book. She's a Maine author. She's Portland based. She's gotten sort of national recognition for this book. And Portland is a very different part of Maine than I think the part of Maine that you grew up in.

Jennifer Acker (09:02):

Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (09:02):

And I personally find it really interesting, but if you don't find that, if there's something that just is antithetical about the way that you approach your life, I also respect that. If you don't want to read a Maine based author, that's okay.

Jennifer Acker (09:16):

Sure.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (09:16):

But it's a funny, to me, it's just an interesting dichotomy.

Jennifer Acker (09:20):

Yeah. I think, well, one of the reasons that I was interested in starting The Common with this place-based mission is that I love reading about other places. I love learning about other places. I love traveling to those places and learning the languages and learning what's distinct and different about those places, but also there is a recognition of common humanity. So I think that's what holds a magazine like The Common Together is this idea that we do have so many similarities as people and just by being human, but the places that we're from do make such an impact and that it can be fascinating to learn about them through a really rich story. So you're not reading a Wikipedia description, you're reading about a particular character's experience and how they see the world. So it really, it's not that every story about Maine is representative of Maine.

(10:17):

I think is part of what you were saying. There's a lot of diversity there. So not every story that I read from Lithuania, you can't extract and say, "This is what all Lithuanians are like. " But it just gives you that interesting window and that's what fiction does, of course, gives you a window into somebody else's experience.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (10:39):

So speaking of fiction, I've been reading and enjoying surrender, which is coming out very soon. And I love that it was specifically goats, that you wanted to have the main character interacting with goats. And I want to learn a little bit about that because I think you personally have kind of a farming related connection that prompted you to go in this direction, but do you have a goat connection that drew you to this story?

Jennifer Acker (11:12):

Sort of. So I did grow up on a farm. My dad was a psychologist, but he also was a farmer and a really extraordinary farmer. And so he grew everything from rhubarb to blueberries to apples and every vegetable and herb you could imagine. And we had a barn with chickens and horses when I was growing up, no goats, unfortunately. My dad was interested in having fiber goats, like Angora goats or something like that. We would go to the common ground fair every year, which used to be just down the street from where we lived before it moved. And we just loved the goats and they were so soft and who doesn't want a very fuzzy goat. But my mom, who was also part of this equation, said she did not want to spend all of her time spinning yarn. And so otherwise, what were we going to do with all of these Angora goats?

(12:11):

And my dad who had grown up on a farm in Colorado, had grown up with milking animals. And the cash crop for his family, he did grow up on a subsistence farm. They sold milk. And so he knew what it was like to milk every day and to really to have to be that part of your daily routine. So he didn't want milking animals. So no goats during my upbringing, but then a couple of years ago, my father passed away and we sold the farm to another farmer, which was important to us. We wanted the land to stay with someone who would carry on some of that vision. And she was a cheese maker. She started Fuzzy Udder Creamery, which I had known about and has won awards and was very, very special. And so she brought her goats to the farm. And I think that was the genesis of this book, was sort of thinking about someone whose dream is to save the family farm and raise goats and make cheese.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (13:23):

Funny intersection when I was a resident and I was in the middle of family medicine training my co-resident, Craig Schneider, who now practices at Maine Medical Center as a physician in integrative medicine and family medicine, he told me days that got really hard, he's like, "You know, I'm just going to give it up. I'm going to become a goat farmer. I'm going to make goat cheese." And there was something about the mystique of that for Craig that, and if he hears this, he'll probably laugh because this was a very long time ago that we had this. But there's something about like, I don't know, what we perceive to be the simplicity of this, and again, perceive is the operative word here, because I think that when you describe this interaction with the animals, I mean, these are not animals who are like, "Yeah, it's okay if you sleep late, no problem." I mean, they exist in the world the way that we as humans exist.

(14:12):

They have biological needs. And so when I was reading about the goats, the other thing I was thinking about is goats have very distinct personalities, a lot of them. I mean, I think probably a lot of animals do that we don't recognize, but goats particularly.

Jennifer Acker (14:28):

Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (14:30):

So was that possibly part of the appeal for you?

Jennifer Acker (14:32):

Oh, so much fun. Absolutely. Yeah. I think when I started interviewing goat farmers for research for this book and just walking through the barns and the farmers would just list out all the names, this is Mary, this is Windy, this is Misty, this is ... And like all the names, all the distinct personalities, and you just spend some time with goats and you see that they really do have these extraordinary personalities. I feel like sheep, not so much, but goats are extremely curious, they're intelligent, they want to interact with you. And there's all of this sort of cultural mystique around goats that they'll eat rubber shoes or you just give them any trash and they'll eat that and that's not true, but they do and they're adorable. So how can you resist them? I could not.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (15:33):

Well, they also, they have an interesting counter mystique I think too.

Jennifer Acker (15:37):

Yes. Goats as the devil or ... Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (15:40):

And as a Capricorn, which is the horoscope of the Goat,

(15:46):

People are like, "Oh, it's because you're so hardworking." It's you climb up over the mountains, but

Jennifer Acker (15:50):

Yeah, maybe mischievous too.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (15:52):

Exactly. Exactly. I mean, I don't want to go too far down the goat thing, but I am obviously intrigued by it because I remember we traveled far field and we saw these goats on this island in the Caribbean and I was like, "Oh, what's going on with the goats? Do you guys milk them? Do you eat them?" And the guy driving the car was like, "No, they're our pets. Why would we eat our pets?" I was so embarrassed as somebody who culturally, I don't ever think of a goat as a pet because I've never had a goat as a pet, but clearly they do.

Jennifer Acker (16:29):

And they do make good pets. I think people really enjoy them. I think that the thing about goats is that they don't like to be alone. So if you want to have a goat pet, you have to have two. And they also are very good at escaping, so you sort of need to give them a job or have some very good fencing, or you really need to keep an eye on them.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (16:50):

I wonder if there's a crossover on the Capricorn thing there. But anyway, that's a self-conversation I'll have in my own head for later on. So obviously there's the goat theme, but the name of your book is Surrender. And there are much bigger themes around kind of coping with aging, coping with one's evolution as a human. So I guess talk to me about that and how were there intersections or parallels with ... I mean, some people write fiction autobiographically, some people do not. So just, I don't know, just play that out a little bit for me.

Jennifer Acker (17:26):

There are many autobiographical influences in this book, although it's not my story, but in a way, I think it was me imagining after my father died, what might it have been like to move back to the farm and raise goats? All the things that happened to my protagonist, Lucy, are not things that I either wish to happen to me or necessarily have happened to me, but that's how sort of I think the genesis of the idea. And then once you develop a character, then the character follows her own path. And I really want to write a book about a small town and about how special they are and about the kinds of things that happen in small towns that just couldn't happen in more populated places. So that was definitely a draw for me. But yes, the main character in this book is married to a much older academic.

(18:19):

They used to have a life in New York City before moving back to the farm. And so he's much older than she is. And so suddenly she's coping with the aging process and how difficult that is. And that's certainly something I have seen in my family. My grandparents lived not exactly in our house, but in a house attached to us. So I certainly saw them age and my father as well when I wasn't living at home when he was sick and dying, but I spent a lot of time at home. So I am familiar with that aging and dying process. And certainly that was something I think I needed to write about because those things were very emotional for me to experience them. And then there's another thread of sort of understanding sexuality as we grow older that my main character has only dated men her whole life.

(19:16):

And then in this book, she reconnects with a girlfriend from high school, someone she used to be friends with, and they really develop a serious romantic relationship. And so that was important to explore too, and was something that, again, relates a little bit to my childhood, to my upbringing, and that it was not easy to come out when I was growing up in the 80s in Maine, especially in a small town and in a rural area. But when I was in high school, several of my mother's friends divorced their husbands and started dating women. And it was clear that this was a very big moment for them, but it was also a very impressionable moment for me. And when I could really see how much courage it takes to change your life like that, and especially in sort of a public way and in a way that people were not really talking about, and they did it because it was right for them and not to make any statements, this is who they were and this is who they fell in love with.

(20:28):

It really just stuck with me. I think that midlife change. And I think as I've gotten older, and now I'm maybe at the age that they were when they made those decisions, thinking about what does it mean to change your life like that? If you have children or if you're married, any kind of big midlife change, I think is going to be very impactful. And I was interested in exploring that kind of real life change for my character.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (20:59):

You raise a really interesting idea. And what it brings up for me is what other people need you to be. So if you're going in a different direction, then all of this time, there are things that other people have sort of ascribed to you as an individual, whether you're a parent or whether you're some sort of a caregiver of sorts, but when you go in a different direction, you're not just changing your reality, you're changing other people's reality. And how much responsibility do you have for those other people? Do you hold yourself to "Okay, well, if everybody needs me to be this, I'll keep being this. " And the further we go along in our lives, the more there might be a tension. Maybe for some people there never is and you're happy with what's going on and you just do what you do.

Jennifer Acker (21:49):

I think we all feel that tension, what you described is we have not only responsibilities to other people, but we want to be certain things to the people that we love in our lives and we want to be able to support them and continue to love them and continue to have relationships with them. But if you have a competing passion, whether it's work or another relationship or raising children or any of the number of both obligations and concerns and desires that we have in our lives, it really is a balancing act. And I think that is very much what Lucy thinks about and is, how do I stay true to myself, but also fulfill my obligations to those that I love and not just fulfill obligations in a clinical way, but how do I really be there for the people in my life who I want to be there for?

Dr. Lisa Belisle (22:39):

So one of the things that I, because I do a lot of reading and I notice there's just a wonderful preponderance of writing by younger people, which is fantastic and also an interesting representation of people who are not younger by people who perhaps are younger. And I'm not trying to cast aspersions. I'm happy that people are bringing it up, but they will often be like, "Well, the 50 year old woman with the gray hair and stooped over with the cane." And I'm like, "How many 50 year old women do I know who actually are at that stage?" Not that there's anything wrong with that, but that's not actually true generally, but you actually are representing a very true to life person in a very true to life way who is actively in middle age, which I think tends to be somewhat unusual. There's, again, we have a lot of books about quote old people who are quote in their 80s and 90s and they tend to be kind of cute and like they have all these big life lessons, but every life stage has a reality to it.

(23:46):

And I really enjoyed the fact that you brought the reality of this quote middle stage to your book with your characters because the more we can understand that, isn't it like visiting in a new place? I don't want to be ... If I'm 25, I don't necessarily need to fast forward myself to 50, but it'd be kind of nice to hang out there for a bit and just sort of experience what it's like.

Jennifer Acker (24:07):

That's what reading gives you, right? I mean, that is that it opens up other worlds and not only reading, but writing. I think writing is spurred by curiosity and by introspection. And so you're both looking at the world and other people's experiences and trying to imagine your way into another experience. So if I were this person with this set of circumstances, how would I feel? How would I act? What would be important to me? And that's that sort of fundamental act of empathy that goes into writing, but it also comes from the reader's point of view that the reader has to be generous and to allow themselves to be sort of swept up into another life that is not like them. But yeah, it was important to me to sort of represent as empathetically and realistically as possible that this phase, I mean, midlife is a real thing and it happens to all of us differently.

(25:09):

And so I was exploring what is it like for this one particular imaginary person.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (25:14):

So talking about writing, I mean, you're the founder and editor and chief of the common, you are yourself a writer and also there's this educational component that you've pursued. So there's a fair amount of working with other writers and having spoken with a lot of, well, I'll call them visual artists, it does tend to be often that way, that you have your craft, you teach your craft, you curate the craft, but they're very different, I think, things that people experience. So talk to me about that piece where you're helping with the education and the collaboration with other writers.

Jennifer Acker (25:56):

I think writing happens in community or rather it's writing is a solitary activity that flourishes when it takes place in community. And so I think that's one of the reasons because writing is so solitary and only you can do it by yourself. There are some people write in pairs, of course, but the majority of the experience is that you are in your own head writing out your own words. And so then you emerge from that experience and it can be very difficult to talk about and to sort of ... And so you want to be able to connect with other people who know what you're talking about and who have gone through that experience and this particularly strange endeavor of making things up and telling stories that are not true because they're wonderful to read because humans love stories. And that's sort of, I think that is sort of built into us and is part of our communication.

(26:53):

And so, one of the things that we do at The Common is to try to create that community and we do it in a lot of different ways. We do it through teaching high school students over the summer, whereas a program, it's sort of a two week bootcamp for high school students who want to learn either the building blocks of writing fiction or already have some experience and we have an advanced level workshop for them. And so that's a lot of fun and we look forward to it. Every year we get to connect with high school students around the country. And then there are other components, whether it's actually directly teaching in the classroom. I have taught classes at Amherst and other colleges and universities. So where that's really a classroom setting where you're teaching, writing and editing and teaching ... I love working with college students.

(27:42):

I think they're just on the precipice of so many exciting things. They know themselves well enough to sort of direct themselves towards particular interests, but they still have a lot of wonder and excitement about what's in front of them. So I work with interns at the college who are rather interns work in the Common and we get to be in the privileged position of sort of mentoring them and also learning from them at the same time. Yeah. So The Common has a number of programs where we are working to create community through supporting writing and through teaching writing as well.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (28:20):

So I was excited to learn ... I mean, maybe excited's a strong word. If talking to a writer, I want to be more precise in my language, but intrigued. How's that? To learn that you publish poems and stories in local papers, but that you also went to the governor's mansion as part of a statewide- When I was a kid. ... poetry contest. I mean, especially in a place like Maine, which is just not a very big state, to have that happen is really an incredibly big deal for someone who is in formative years as a writer. So I love that you're bringing this opportunity to other people, but you yourself had kind of this interesting thing happen early on that is wonderful.

Jennifer Acker (29:07):

Yeah, it was a terrific opportunity. I cannot even remember what it was. I'll have to ask my mom, maybe she remembers, but I can't even remember what the opportunity was, but I know that I met Governor Brennan and had my picture taken with him and wrote a poem to get there. But that is ... Yeah, no, the thought that as a kid, you can write a poem and meet the governor was pretty exciting, at least it was for me. Teachers are so important because teachers are the ones who bring those opportunities to kids, otherwise, how do you know about things when you're eight years old? And just sort of, yeah, they're sort of fostering that process. And so all the contests and things that exist for young people are so important. It's how you start to recognize the thing that excites you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (29:59):

And there's a Big focus right now on, for example, sports in schools. I think it always has been. I mean, it was there when I was growing up, certainly. And I think that with Maine, in Maine, at least my personal experience was I went to a small enough school that I could be kind of a part of all of these things. I wouldn't say that writing, however, had ... I mean, we had the literary journal, but to have an award around writing and have that be a focus. I mean, I think that's really great because it's not like you have a statewide basketball championship of writing. I mean, to have that be such a special thing that, I mean, clearly it probably wasn't the thing that moved you in the direction of doing what you're doing, but it certainly didn't hurt.

Jennifer Acker (30:38):

Sure, sure. I mean, sports were a big deal in my schools too. And I always played lots of sports and was an athlete and all the way through college. But yeah, you sort of need the exposure to all the things, to sports and to science and to the arts and to backpacking and the outdoors. And so I think it's important to have all those opportunities for young people so that people can see where they excel, see where their heart lies, and also see what kind of community do I want to be a part of.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (31:11):

You also spent time in Kenya and Mexico. So you went away to gain some perspective, I guess, and then came back and have, it seems like largely been New England-ish based for quite a number of years.

Jennifer Acker (31:27):

Right.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (31:27):

But were there things that you learned during your time away that shifted your perspective significantly?

Jennifer Acker (31:34):

For sure. I think that was part of how I became so cognizant of the impact of place. So I was young when I graduated from high school and instead of going directly to college, I deferred for a year and we didn't have the word gap year then because it wasn't a thing, but that is what I did. So I spent the first half of the year in Kenya and the second half of the year in Mexico. And then when I started college, I became actually an anthropology major. I wasn't an English major, but I majored in anthropology because that is the study of culture. And I was so intrigued by how different civilizations arrive and how arise and how just by virtue of where you grow up, it's going to, as we were talking about earlier, how it shaped so many things about you. So I think my experience being a minority also, like going to Kenya and being the only white person in the village and being noticed in that way and having so much curiosity about me just for the way that I looked, it makes you realize things that you don't when you're in the majority.

(32:52):

When you look like other people and when you all speak the same language and sound the same and are going to the same schools, I think you don't realize what it can be like or what it can feel like to be visibly different. And there are invisible differences as well, of course, but I think I was 17, 18 when I was living in these other countries and it made a huge impact on me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (33:21):

So you and I met for the first time at the Portland Art Gallery actually like last night at one of our openings and part of the conversation we had was around pieces that you enjoyed in particular from the art gallery. One of them was one that you have now. It's a Jean Jack piece and Jean is known for her barns and colors, but there's definitely a spaciousness around the barns. And then conversely, you have been interested in Nina Fuller and her photography and there's obviously a farm thing going on there. I love reading books because you can bring your own interpretations away, but it's a very different experience to sit and read the books that somebody else has read than to sit and look at a piece that somebody else is looking at. So I just think that the interpretive sort of realm is so broad.

(34:21):

So talk to me about your connection to those pieces and why those stand out to you.

Jennifer Acker (34:28):

Yeah. The Jean Jack's piece was interesting. I think my husband and I were walking down the street and looked into the gallery and that piece really, really caught our eye. The color really spoke to us, but also the sort of the spareness, the architecture, the forms, and also that feeling of isolated houses that sort of spoke to me as someone who grew up in a rural area. And so that really felt, that resonated with me emotionally. And as for the photographs, I mean, how can you not like Nina's photographs? I mean, they are so compelling. And because I had just written a book about goats, I was particularly interested in the sheep and goats that she photographs. And so actually out of that connection, I'm now going to be publishing a suite of Nina's photographs in the common because they're so place-based. So there has been this very nice connection through the gallery.

(35:35):

I haven't gotten to meet Nina yet, but we've talked quite a lot and to work on sort of curating a selection of her marvelous photographs for the common, because I think they're a perfect fit for what we do.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (35:46):

Oh, I love that. I mean, having interviewed Nina and knowing that she has such a strong storytelling aspect to who she is, I mean, I just love that that kind of overlap existed and that you are bringing it forward in a way that will expose her work to more people.

Jennifer Acker (36:05):

Yeah, I hope so.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (36:06):

I mean, I kind of love where we are right now as this sort of cultural age that we think about story and it's not just story words, it's story words, story photos, story dance, story, music, story, and people are able to think about narrative in a much bigger way so that if your mind connects to words and you're more of a linguist, great. But also if you can connect to a painting, then ... I mean, it kind of gives me chills because it's so much more open and there's so much more access to people when we are able to broaden our scope.

Jennifer Acker (36:44):

Right. And I think that is primarily what stories do for us is they connect people over time and over distance and can sort of convey both those similarities and those differences that we've been talking about. They can convey a particular experience and make you realize, "Oh, other people are different than I am." And they respond differently to the situation and I don't know what I would do in that situation, but also to think about, "Oh yes, I can connect with this person in a situation and in a place that I have never encountered before because as humans, we have similar brains and hearts."

Dr. Lisa Belisle (37:27):

Yeah, and I think that's probably needed more now than ever before. I believe that-

Jennifer Acker (37:32):

For sure.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (37:33):

There's something wonderful about globalization and also something that I think has felt really scary and overwhelming about globalization. So the more we can go back to something wonderful and try to make connections that help people feel okay, I think that the better off we're going to be. And I mean, you describe yourself as a library kid. I don't think I've ever described myself, thought of myself that way, but I certainly was something like that. I read every book in the children's section when I was probably younger. I should not have probably been reading some of those YA novels, but I did. But that was when I became a traveler. I mean, it was then in Yarmouth, Maine, the oldest of 10 children, my parents, we were not going anywhere because we were just raising those kids in Yarmouth, Maine, but I was traveling. My brain was elsewhere and that's been the story.

(38:25):

Right.

Jennifer Acker (38:25):

Well, it sounds like for you, you gained some privacy through reading. I don't imagine there was a lot of that in a family of more than, well, I see 10 kids and some adults. And so yeah, I think that can be hard to find. So you found your escape route.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (38:43):

I mean, that's also an interesting observation.

(38:45):

I hadn't really thought about that, but that is certainly true. But it is interesting that I was simultaneously world traveling in my mind and also gathering the space inside to do that. So I do love that about books, that they kind of can be whatever we want or need them to be.

Jennifer Acker (38:59):

Yeah. Yeah. They provide a real sense of communion, and I think that they can make a lonely kid feel like she has friends or connections, and they can also make a kid or an adult, someone who's overwhelmed with people, give them some moments to themselves in which they're in their own heads and don't have to be elbowing other people out of the way.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (39:25):

Well, there you go. So this is more, for those of you who would like to read Jennifer's book, Surrender, which is coming out very soon, whether you're somebody who wants to travel to a goat farm or wants a little time to yourself, I mean, whatever way that people want to connect, they can certainly connect through your writing or through the common actually, which is wonderful. How can people learn more about the work that you're doing?

Jennifer Acker (39:49):

I have a website, which is jenniferacker.com and all of the information about the book, including pre-ordering. So if you're so eager to read that you don't want to wait to order until the book comes out, you can pre-order it and it will arrive on April 14th, which is the day that the book comes out. And to find out more about the Common, you can actually do that from my website also. There's a section of the website that's dedicated to the common, so you can read more there. If anyone out there is on Instagram, I'm also there at Jen\_Acker. So those are some ways that people can keep in touch.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (40:26):

Well, I hope that they do. I've very much enjoyed our conversation. Thank you for coming in today.

Jennifer Acker (40:30):

Thank you so much for this. It was really a lot of fun.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (40:33):

I agree. Thank you. I'm Dr. Lisa Belisle you've been listening to or watching Radio Maine, our video podcast where we explore and celebrate creativity and the human spirit. I've been speaking with Jennifer Acker, who is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Common, also author and of the upcoming book Surrender and other fictional title that we haven't even mentioned, but I'm sure it's equally wonderful, and also the director of the Amherst College Lit Fest. I encourage you to learn more about Jennifer and also maybe I can convince you to come back to another gallery opening. So if you are watching or listening, you can come join us at one of the Portland Art Gallery openings.

Jennifer Acker (41:14):

It's a date.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (41:14):

Okay. Very good. Sounds good. Thanks so much.

Jennifer Acker (41:17):

Thank you.