Selena Anderson is one of the University of Houston’s newly minted PhD’s in Fiction. She completed her MFA at Columbia University where she won the Transatlantic/Henfield Prize. She has held fellowships at the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, the Carson McCullers Center, and the MacDowell Colony. Her work appears or is forthcoming in AGNI, Joyland, Georgia Review, Callaloo, Glimmer Train, Kenyon Review Online, NANO Fiction, and elsewhere.

Recent UHCWP grad Melanie Brkich interviewed Selena about her work, her new teaching job, and what she’ll miss most about Houston.

Melanie Brkich: Congrats on successfully defending your dissertation! How does it feel to be a doctor?

Selena Anderson: Thank you, Melanie! It’s cool! I’ve been working towards it for a long time and it’s always nice to accomplish something that you’ve worked so hard for.

MB: What is your dissertation about? Where did you draw the inspiration for it?

SA: My dissertation is a collection of stories about people who want to win and who make a bad situation worse by trying to do something about it. The stories are set in Texas—but in my imagined Texas of the recent past. There are ghosts, tiny men, a slave ship, dolls, dudes who talk in third person, forest fires, and plenty of girls brooding in their apartments. Continue reading →