The Writing University conducts a series of interviews with writers while they are in Iowa City participating in the various University of Iowa writing programs. We sit down with authors to ask about their work, their process and their descriptions of home.
Today we are talking with Spencer Lane Jones, an MFA candidate in the University of Iowa's Nonfiction Writing Program and essayist from Columbia, South Carolina. She's at work on a book about four school teachers in England and France in the early 20th century, including Simone Weil.
Spencer Lane Jones will complete her MFA in the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa in May 2025. She is currently a Marcus Bach Fellow at UI. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Sewanee Review, Bennington Review, Arts & Letters, Black Warrior Review, and other publications. She is represented by Keely Boeving at WordServe Literary Agency, and she writes "In the Schoolhouse" on Substack.
1. Can you tell us a little bit about what brought you to the University of Iowa?
I taught high school for seven years before I came here. When the Covid lockdowns began I suddenly had a lot more time on my hands, so I started writing a lot more. I'd always written, but not that much in my first few years teaching (you barely have time to breathe). Quarantine gave me the time I needed to work it back into my daily routine.
2. What is the inspiration for your work right now?
I'm writing a book about how four school teachers in England and France confronted the early 20th century's social and political crises. So I suppose they are my inspiration! Three of them were siblings—Hettie, Will, and Winnie Wheeldon—who were targeted by domestic spies in England in 1916 and wound up getting charged for a crime they didn't commit. They have a wild story, which you can read about here. The fourth teacher is Simone Weil, the famous French philosopher. Weil died young (at 34), and her politics and religious faith underwent remarkable evolutions in her short life. A lot of that evolution was tied to her vocation as a school teacher, a part of her life that historically has been rather underappreciated.
3. Do you have a daily writing routine?
I'm one of those (perhaps annoying) 5:00am writers. I think routine is important (I'm one of those people who will never do a thing if I don't make it a ritual), but writing doesn't have to begin before the birds are awake. I started my teaching career in Boston in 2015, and I'd have to get on the train to school each morning right at 6:00. The train was the only place/time I could really write, because there was never any time during the school day and in the evenings all my intellectual energy would be totally sapped. So I became an early bird writer because I had to be, and it hasn't really left my body.
4. What are you reading right now? Are you reading for research or pleasure?
The line between "research" and "pleasure" gets fuzzier and fuzzier the longer you write :) I'm reading two books—Leo Tolstoy's Resurrection and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon. I learned through research for my book that Hettie Wheeldon and Simone Weil were both lovers of Tolstoy, and of Resurrection in particular, which is his last novel. Also, sort of out of the blue, one of my Rhetoric students told me during my first semester here that he read it when he was in high school and loved it. The universe kept throwing the book at me, so I had to read it. Morrison is a miraculous writer. Her paragraphs are actual miracles. You get to the end of one having paid attention to every word, every sentence, every transition...and yet the mystery of it gobsmacks you.
5. Tell us about where you are from - what are some favorite details you would like to share about your home?
I'm from the suburbs of Columbia, South Carolina. In some ways I consider myself "Southern," but I also don't always know what that means. It's gotten vaguer as I've gotten older. Or it's flattened out culturally in a lot of places. I think my body is from SC but my soul is from Boston.
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Thanks Spencer!