Meet Monday: Anastasia Selby
Courtesy of Anastasia Selby
Anastasia Selby, currently enrolled in Syracuse University’s MFA Creative Writing program, is working on the fifth draft of her novel, “The Open Curtain.” Selby’s novel won the award for Best Capstone Project in the creative category this year.
At 16 years old, Anastasia Selby abandoned her house in Seattle and ran away to San Francisco in search of a homeless shelter. She then worked on a farm in California and fought forest fires in Oregon and Alaska. Now, several years later, Selby is using her unique journey to write a novel.
After leaving home, she eventually returned to graduate high school. Selby has gone through countless struggles with poverty, bullying, abandonment, losing loved ones, drug abuse, dealing with an eating disorder and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. She is currently enrolled in Syracuse University’s MFA Creative Writing program and is working on the fifth draft of her novel, “The Open Curtain,” which draws on her hardships growing up.
Selby’s novel won the award for Best Capstone Project in the creative category this year. Raised by a single mother who would leave her home alone constantly when she was young. When her mother married an alcoholic, Selby decided to run away to California, where she worked on a farm.
“I ran away because I wanted something better for myself,” Selby said. She permanently left home at 16, and by 21 she was fighting forest fires for Forest Services in Oregon and Alaska. Selby was struggling with substance abuse and relationship problems during her teens and early twenties. Selby’s mother took her own life and her father, who she barely new, died by the time she graduated college.
In “The Open Curtain,” Selby drew on her traumatic past, particularly her experience with grief after her mother’s death. When she enrolled in a fiction workshop course at SU, her professor, Arthur Flowers, urged her to write a novel of her story.
Selby set out to achieve that in “The Open Curtain.” Though she compares the novel’s protagonist to herself, she notes major differences in the fictional character’s personality.
“I really want my novel to tell people, ‘You’re not alone.’ That’s the biggest reason I wanted to write it,” Selby said. “I just want people to know that, whatever they’re going through, it will get better.”
Published on August 30, 2015 at 11:16 pm
Contact: moberger@syr.edu
