Contributor Spotlight: Nicola Sebastian
Nicola Sebastian’s essay “How to Be Alone” is part of Issue 78 of Bellingham Review. Subscribe or purchase a single issue through our Submittable page here.
What would you like to share with our readers about the work you contributed to the Bellingham Review?
I wrote this essay when I first moved to New York, nearly five years ago. I had moved there to “Write” but all I seemed to do was feel frustrated about not writing. So, out of sheer desperation and boredom, this strange piece tumbled out, almost all in one go. When I came back to it the next morning to revise, the ending came to me, and, though it felt right, I was completely surprised by its turn. Editing this piece for the Bellingham Review, I came to realize how important frustration and boredom are to my process of creating; the final defeat of my perfectionist ego opens the door for that someone else—still me, but not quite—to come in and take over. In some vague way I am always aware of this other, alternate version of myself; she trails above me like a vigilant ghost, taking in all the less-than-ideal situations I get myself into. This is why I think that the use of the second person pronoun in the essay felt fitting, as if it were this shadow self relaying instructions to the flustered, floundering me from who knows where.
Tell us about your writing life.
The first story I ever wrote was about a little girl excited to bring home a puppy. Twelve pages in and she hadn’t even gone to the adoption center. Needless to say, that story was never finished, and I’ve been struggling to finish my stories and essays ever since. I came to creative writing through a backdoor, so to speak, having lurked in the field as a grad student of Literary and Cultural Studies, and also as a lifestyle magazine editor and freelance writer for 4-5 years before deciding to take the leap into writing for myself. I enrolled in the creative writing program started by Xu Xi in City University, Hong Kong, which in its rich but short life was one of the only truly trans-national MFA programs in the world. There, I wrote an essay about salt that, safe to say, has changed my life, because it was the first time I had put into words the ideas and images that have always unknowingly shaped and sustained me: the ocean, family, the interplay of personal, cultural, and natural history, synchronicity, and the random and miraculous ways in which Earthbound beings are all connected.
Which non-writing aspects of your life most influence your writing?
Surfing, without a doubt. Spending so much time immersed in the push and pull of the ocean currents and tides has made its mark on my inner rhythms and outward perspective. Family, I have a big one, and it’s as happy, chaotic, and dysfunctional as it gets. But also, my ADD. I only got diagnosed a couple years ago, and as I’ve slowly come to accept it as my reality, I’m coming to understand just how much the way I see patterns and make meaning is a result of my frustratingly divergent brain.
What writing advice has stayed with you?
This quote from Montaigne has always stayed with me: “I do not portray being: I portray passing. Not the passing from one age to another, or, as the people say, from seven years to seven years, but from day to day, from minute to minute.” For equally sage if more practical advice, the admonishment to “Just show up,” always manages to keep me going.
What is your favorite book (or essay, poem, short story)? Favorite writers?
WG Sebald, Virginia Woolf, Yasunari Kawabata, Maggie Nelson, Joan Didion, Dostoevsky. The list goes on. I am grateful to any writer that can pull me out of time only to plant me back in, renewed, seeing once again.
What are you reading right now?
Island by Aldous Huxley, Flights by Olga Tokarczuk, and Women with Attention Deficit Disorder by Sari Solden
What project(s) are you working on now, or next?
I’m currently working on my thesis for the creative writing MFA at Columbia University; it’s an ecological memoir about Typhoon Yolanda, and what it means to live on an island in the Pacific. Meanwhile, I’m also writing a story with a grant from National Geographic about the center of the center of marine biodiversity, which happens to be in the Philippines, the Verde Island Passage. Probably too many things going on at once; my problem is that I don’t know how to not be multi.
Anything else our readers might want to know about you?
When there are no waves I like to freedive; so far 60 feet is my personal best, but I hope to improve on that this summer. From a childhood spent singing along with my siblings, I have also learned how to harmonize to practically every song—sometimes I think that’s what I’m doing when I write: harmonizing to a song already being sung.
Where can our readers connect with you online?
@nicolaseabass on Instagram is a good place to start
NICOLA SEBASTIAN writes about the ocean, family, and the (non)fiction that is the postcolonial Filipino identity. From the Philippines, born and raised in Hong Kong, and now living in New York, she has been an island-hopper her whole life; “islandness,” both as sensibility and as question, characterizes her writing. As a surfer and freediver, the ocean is also where she plays. She received a master of fine arts degree in creative nonfiction from City University in Hong Kong, and is completing her second MFA in fiction at Columbia University, where she has also taught creative writing to undergraduates. In 2014, she received the first prize in the Carlos Palanca Awards, the Philippines’ oldest literary competition, for an essay on salt. Nicola is currently at work on an ecological memoir about the biggest typhoon in recorded history, Yolanda, and the Philippine island on which it made landfall, Samar.
Featured Image: “Fractal Dream” by Harald Philipp