Elina Zhang
Transformative Justice Exposure awardee: $20,000
This grant will be used to continue developing a manuscript project, a book-length intellectual memoir called “THE WRECK ITSELF.” The project is an exploration of Zhang’s sexual coming-of-age and an intervention in the way stories about sexual violence are told.
The memoir is named after Adrienne Rich’s poem “Diving into the Wreck” where she writes “the thing I came for: / the wreck and not the story of the wreck / the thing itself and not the myth.” I’ve taken this line as instructive: get to the more complicated version of the truth, rather than the distorted versions of the story.
Parallel to her work on THE WRECK ITSELF, Zhang has been developing a voice writing art criticism and, for the duration of the grant, will further develop the book project as well as her art criticism, with essay publications along the way.
Elina Zhang received an MFA in creative nonfiction writing from the University of Pittsburgh in 2021, during which time she began her manuscript-length project. The following year, she was chosen as a 2022 Periplus Fellow under the mentorship of Lauren Markham, and in 2023, she received invitations to attend the Roots. Wounds. Words. Winter Retreat and the Tin House Summer Workshop.
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