i’ve never really encountered this before, not like this.

i’m in this mfa program, so naturally we talk about authors a lot. the school i’m attending, the truly unfortunately named Georgia College and State University, is actually the school that Flannery O’Connor attended as an undergraduate, in the town where she grew up, so there’s a lot of talk about her. (you can actually go to her childhood home and take tours, and the school seems to nurse more than a little butthurt that Emory University, the rich and prestigious private university in nearby Atlanta, has possession of O’Connor’s personal papers.) but talking about authors is not weird, certainly not talking about authors in a university english department. what is strange, to me at least, is how they are referred to in this program/english department: when they talk about them, they often refer to the authors by their first names. not always, but everyone does it sometimes, it seems.

i first noticed it during discussions of O’Connor, and while it seemed odd to me, i didn’t think much of it. the school, particularly the english department, is very proud of its connection to this important twentieth-century literary figure (so much so that it sometimes feels like a creepy ownership thing), so it didn’t seem outrageous that these feelings manifested in referring to her in such a familiar way. other students and instructors would talk about how they felt when reading ‘Flannery’ or how ‘Flannery’ had inspired them. it’s weird, but i guess they are, in fact, at ‘Flannery’s’ old school, and Andalusia is actually just a few miles down the road, so whatever.

however, this habit is not confined solely to references to Flannery. the past two weeks in my prose forms class, we’ve been reading Sylvia Plath’s journals, and during both of the presentations given by my classmates, they repeatedly referred to Ms. Plath as ‘Sylvia.’ to my knowledge (which is limited, obviously, so who knows i guess), Sylvia Plath has about as much connection to Georgia College and State University and Milledgeville, GA as she does to Arena Mexico, the long-time home base for CMLL (Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre–Mexico’s largest and oldest lucha libre promotion) in Mexico City. this is to say, of course, that she has no connection to either one, so my logic for why Flannery might be addressed by first name doesn’t work here. certainly, Sylvia has, culturally, taken on the status of almost a patron saint for a certain type of sensitive, tortured artist, particularly for female artists, so that might account for my fellow students feeling a kinship with her that makes them feel comfortable calling her by her first name. (both of the presenters, in fact, were female, though many other students, male and female, followed their lead in calling Sylvia by her first name.) i’ve also heard multiple other authors discussed as though they’re old friends of everyone in the program/department. after i did a presentation on him last semester (where i only called him by his last name), we had a lively discussion about ‘Haneef’ (Abdurraqib), and i actually met another real live person who is as enthusiastic about ‘Annie’ (Dillard) as i am. i suppose it’s not a big deal, but it never stops taking me by surprise.

my best guess is that the department i’m in now is sort of defined by its creative writing mfa program, which is all about training students up to be writers. the majority of its identity seems to come from that, so it follows the lead of the program, and a large part of the program’s goal is to get us, the students, to see ourselves as writers. my prose forms teachers made us go around the room and proclaim, ridiculously, that we already are writers. maybe a small part of that, of seeing ourselves as the same kind of people as Flannery and Sylvia and Haneef and Annie is to speak about them like they’re the exact same as us, like they’re our homies. i suppose there’s some logic in that. or maybe everyone is just crazy but me. probably, though, it’s that i’m a tool.

Annie, give me strength.