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"Revolutionary" Author Alex Myers Visits EHS as Writer-in-Residence
“Don’t be so certain you know where you’re headed.” Alex Myers let his words sink in and continued. “Write to the point.” Myers shared this wisdom on Friday while sitting at the Harkness table in an English classroom, facilitating discussion on the nonfiction art form.
Over the course of the next three days, Myers, this year’s Writer-in-Residence, and author of “Revolutionary,” led class discussions, met with faculty and staff, and shared his story during Community Meeting. His advice and guidance were focused on writing, but for Myers, writing and living go hand-in-hand.
“He told us to begin our pieces by writing them out on paper,” said Augusta Nau ’15. “He is a big proponent of the pen to paper method because it allows you to edit and rearrange your story as you transfer your prose from paper to the computer.” [I just followed his advice.]
Myers led Nau’s class in a writing exercise. First the students were to visualize a specific memory from an innocent perspective. Then they were to write about that same memory through a more mature lens. Nau, who is currently at work on her memoir, said, “It was fascinating to hear from an experienced writer about ways to access old memories from a fresh perspective.”
Myers is no stranger to accessing old memories from a fresh perspective to tell new stories.
Myers is no stranger to accessing old memories from a fresh perspective to tell new stories.
Raised as a girl, Myers came out as transgender while a student at Phillips Exeter Academy. After Exeter, he graduated from Harvard University and earned a master’s degree in religion at Brown University. He began teaching English in secondary schools, and between the hours of coaching, teaching, and working with students, Myers wrote. He wrote a lot.
English teacher Lucy Goldstein ’97 worked with Myers when they were teaching together at St. George’s. “I was always amazed at his diligence and his ability to write every day, no matter what,” she said. Last year, Myers published his first novel: “Revolutionary” — a fictional account of a woman who disguises herself as a man so that she can join the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. Myers is a descendant of the woman who inspired the novel, and his personal experience allows him to express her conflict of identity.
David Shribman, a reviewer for the New York Times, wrote of “Revolutionary”: “This is an approachable, imaginative novel, a tale of muskets and masquerade, of marches and mutiny, that is also as an evocative portrayal of life in the Continental Army, capturing the mixture of bravado and boredom of army life. It is hard to repress the thought that in pretending she is someone else, Mr. Myers’s secret soldier is doing little more than what all soldiers do, quite literally putting on a brave face for battle.”
Myers’s final words as Writer-in-Residence came during Community Meeting on Tuesday. He shared his story: the tumultuous journey, not of discovering who he was because that he already knew, but the journey of figuring out how to be the man he always knew that he was. Myers found answers through reflection, discussions, support groups, and writing. He was able to get to his point. That’s why his advice to writers — to focus, allow memories to speak for themselves, eliminate the noise — resonates so powerfully.
To learn more about Myers and “Revolutionary,” click here.
