T.E. WILDERSON: LITERARY ACTION FIGURE
Hello. Welcome to my website.
My pen name is T.E. Wilderson, in a nod to one of my favorite authors, T.C. Boyle. But you can just call me Troy.
I’m also an editor who’s spent over a decade freelancing on developmental edits, substantive edits, line edits, and proofreading.
And spent some time as an editorial & administrative assistant with an indie publishing house that had quite a hand in shaping my author voice.
If you want to know more about my life and career path, hop on over to my blog page.
(Fair warning: It’s long and quite rambling, because I thought absolutely no one was paying attention. It was essentially my journal, but online. Journaling is decidedly not my thing. Until it was. At least, for a while…)
You will not find mention of my life as a creative writing teaching artist anywhere in my blog posts for the very simple fact that teaching was not ever on my radar as something I might want to do. Which is wild, given how incredibly fulfilling teaching is for me. Nourishing is a better word. And the community that has stemmed from my teaching was this unforeseen bit of serendipity I couldn’t have ever imagined.
Recently, I’ve been thinking back to the day I was leaving an advertising new business client meeting in Los Angeles. For the first time, I noticed the PEN office in the complex. I knew PEN had something to do with the literary world. But what, exactly? So, I stopped in. A very kind PEN staffer gave me a primer. Just as I was about to leave, the staffer asked if I’d heard of their Emerging Voices Fellowship. I, indeed, had not. They encouraged me to apply. Now, at this point I had not published a single word of prose. But, I had a story I’d been working on that felt like my best piece yet. I thought, “Why not?” It doesn’t cost anything to apply. I had no expectations whatsoever.
Welp. When I was named a finalist, that was actually the beginning of everything for T. E. Wilderson, author.
Now you know my story, kind of. At least the salient points as it relates to me and my writing. Thanks for stopping by…
My Copyediting “Spotlight”: The In-Betweens by Davon Loeb from West Virginia University Press, February 2023
As Davon’s copy editor on his lyrical memoir, The In-Betweens, connecting with the author as an author first and then as their editor, and as someone who wants to work closely to get their words on the page in the most brilliant way possible has become my modus operandi. The memoir was featured on People, and now it is showing signs of manifesting that Jorge Luis Borges quote: “When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation.”
A smattering of the reviews:
“Utterly captivating and resonant, The In-Betweens deserves a top spot on your bookshelf.”—Chicago Review of Books
“Resonant. . . . Engagingly delivered, candid reflections on heritage and identity.”—Kirkus Reviews
“While the memoir is masterfully told—Loeb employs a variety of craft techniques that have a powerful effect—what makes The In-Betweens so special is the thoughtfulness Loeb brings to his work.”—The Rumpus
“With its keen attention to language and its moving portrayal of boyhood and belonging, The In-Betweens has earned its place alongside the greats of lyrical, coming-of-age nonfiction.”—The Adroit Journal
“Loeb’s debut memoir crackles with light, breaking open each superb chapter to uncover a memorable and gripping origin story.”—Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of World of Wonders
“Sentence to sentence, The In-Betweens is awake to the awe of being in a body and the danger of negotiating a culture that wants to drive space between us, inside us. Davon Loeb is writing to stay alive under the harshest conditions, and he has given us a brilliant, devastating book.”—Paul Lisicky, author of Later: My Life at the Edge of the World
I
love snow—even in April
was a PEN/Emerging Voices fellowship finalist
was a McKnight Foundation Creative Writing Fellow
won a prize for my woodworking at the Minnesota State Fair
am an ice skater (who can do a Salchow)
am also known by the nickname Daisy
was born in New Orleans
and is a New Orleanian wherever I go . . .
so, a New Orlesotan?
My *Blackjack* List of Influential Authors
As an author,
your “voice”—that imprint you leave on any piece of writing that readers can detect and will recognize as your work—
can (and should) grow and evolve over time.
As a fledgling writer, one may very well attempt to sound like authors whom they admire.
The authors one reads as they develop their voice will linger somewhere inside one’s noggin
even if the traces of their influence are not overt.
This list constitutes the top twenty-one authors who have helped shape my voice.
The top of the list consists of the authors who came to me earliest and have lingered the most enduringly in my writing.
After that, it was too difficult to parse an order. Most importantly, the order is not what’s important.
The way that they touched me and how their work continues to resonate, is.
Percival Everett
T.C. Boyle
Richard Bausch
Cormac McCarthy
James Baldwin
Raymond Carver
Denis Johnson
Alice Walker
Lorrie Moore
George Saunders
Grace Paley
John Cheever
Marguerite Duras
Haruki Murakami
ZZ Packer
Jhumpa Lahiri
Flannery O’Connor
James Salter
Viet Thanh Nguyen
Tommy Orange
Carmen Maria Machado