Nina Adel graduated from Hamline in 2018 with an MFA in Creative Writing. She recently won the Bellevue Literary Review 2020 Buckvar Award for Nonfiction for her lyric essay “Refugere” and has been published in Moria, Sweet Tree Review, Selcouth Station, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, The Tennessean, and Louisiana Folklife Journal, among others, and is a Glimmer Train honorable mention recipient. Also a singer-songwriter, she lives in the heart of Nashville with her two children and teaches writing at a local college. She is the coordinator and instructor for the Creative Writing for Immigrants and Refugees program at the Porch Writer's Collective. Follow her on Instagram @writethinkspea.

Describe a typical day. What do you enjoy most about your work? What are some of the challenges you face?

Every day is absolutely different from the one before, which is both enjoyable and challenging. I have two career tracks: I am an artist, and I teach. I’ve always done that, but I used to carry out my artistic endeavors in music as a singer-songwriter-musician, but now I write – in the spirit of my Hamline MFA in Creative Writing – mostly hybrid genres. I try to write on Friday mornings and Saturday evenings at a minimum. While I used to teach ESL and provide academic coaching for learning-different kids, I’ve been teaching college writing for a number of years now, and my daily schedule changes every semester. Additionally, I have recently taken on the position of coordinator and instructor for the Creative Writing for Immigrants and Refugees Program, an outreach project of The Porch Writers’ Collective (our local Nashville independent writing center). That’s a mind-boggling lot of work for a writer and single mom with a family and full life beyond work. I basically run a twelve-ring circus, and I love it.

How did Hamline help prepare you for this work?

I had just completed an MA in English and writing when I came to Hamline for my MFA. That first grad degree helped me get centered in the academic world, which I had eschewed after my undergrad as I was concentrating on my life as an artist. Though I’d always taught, when I was younger, I somehow felt underneath that working as an educator stained my identity as an artist, though I loved teaching and connecting so personally with my students. When I came to Hamline, I was finally ready to embrace my identity as both an artist and educator. To do that, I had to learn to create works of (literary) art and stand behind them fully. I had to let go of the feeling that my artistic works were inferior because I had a whole different income-earning career. Studying with my wonderful Hamline professors and a community of fellow students who both worked outside the field and were fully committed to their writing lives, just at the moment I was ready for the biggest interior task of my life, was nothing short of miraculous to my process.

How do you engage in lifelong learning? How do you stay current in your profession?

I read, I write, I collaborate with other artists, writers and educators, I go to conferences and stay in touch with the friends I make there. I now intentionally speak without hesitation about my work and projects, and others want to share with me in return; this always brings me more ways to stay current and learn. Collaborating with others – sometimes even when the project is more in their wheelhouse than yours - is essential to being a lifelong learner.

What advice do you have for current Hamline students?

What you learn at Hamline will lead you, when you are finished, into whatever is your next learning and living moment, so you don’t have to worry about that now. Use every last bit of your breath and your energy to stay present in this opportunity for education and personal development. Pick a song to remind you of this (like REM’s “Stand”, but there are so many!), and listen to it several times whenever you start to falter – this is far more useful than you might think. Engaging in good works to help your community is a way to grow, learn, and make unexpected to assist you with staying firmly planted in this present moment of your life.

What do you feel is the most important aspect of leadership?

It’s a trifecta: work on the inside (self-awareness, self-acceptance and self-advocacy), work on the outside (identifying and fulfilling responsibility to the needs of the community), and work in the space between the two, which includes understanding boundaries – setting them and respecting those of others - and nurturing a desire to connect yourself openly to the world outside of you.

What are you reading right now?

Saeed Jones’ memoir How We Fight for Our Lives and re-reading one I’ve loved for years, Arundhati Roy’s lyrical novel The God of Small Things.