2007

Danielle E. Green

Born and raised in Newburyport, Massachusetts, I spent much of my adolescence writing novels, in which I was encouraged by my family and a couple of wonderful English and Creative Writing teachers at Newburyport High School. When I started college at the University of New Hampshire in September 2007, I imagined that writing (creatively) would be my career. I have taken a couple detours along the way to this imagined future, however, starting with a few years working in corporate finance, a move to Chicago, and, ultimately, my acceptance to graduate school. I am now a second-year Ph.D. student in English at the University of Notre Dame, where I am also completing minors in gender studies and Irish studies. Despite that my creative writing has taken something of a back seat as I pursue my graduate work, I continue to put my creative energy into academic writing and teaching.

 

Just recently, I was thinking about the Nicole Lemieux Knight scholarship, and regretting that - for the moment - I am not dedicating time to the creative pursuits I had envisioned. However, I think that what I do now requires just as much creativity as imagining plots and characters: I am dedicated to bringing Victorian and modernist plots and characters into conversation with present concerns, and I am dedicated to social justice in both my own work and in my teaching. I believe the spirit of the Nicole Lemieux Knight scholarship and Nicole’s legacy permeates these commitments, and I know that somewhere down the line, I will return to writing novels.