Crocetta '21 Featured in Literary Publication
2 December 2021 • Alums Crocetta '21 Featured in Literary Publication
Living is also about your unconscious experiences, Jillian Crocetta ’21 explains about her nonfiction work “Salamander Literature.”
“How you live is not only about your conscious experience, but your subconscious and unconscious experiences,” says Jillian Crocetta ’21, who explores this and other themes in “Salamander Literature,” which was published in the fall edition of Guesthouse digital literary website.
Written as part of Crocetta’s Honors project titled “Night is a Strange Alchemy,” the nonfiction piece uses repetition and features a non-sequential, unstructured style “much like how dreams are,” she says.
Crocetta says she has always considered herself a creative writer at heart, so getting published is “kind of validating.”
Graduating summa cum laude in writing and rhetoric and English with a minor in Holocaust studies, Crocetta credits her adviser Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature Geoffrey Babbitt for helping her through all phases of the Honors project, from writing to publishing. “He was an awesome resource and just a really good mentor,” she says.
Previously, Crocetta has written for SANCTUARY Magazine and New Voices Magazine and has blogged about entrepreneurship and small business for Biz2Credit.
In addition to her work as a writer, she serves as a recruitment and onboarding coordinator at Touro College and is working on a project with Professors of Religious Studies Michael Dobkowski and Richard Salter ’86, P’15, researching Peter Herzog ’52, a Jewish Austrian emigrant who through assistance from an HWS trustee was able to come to the United States from Austria during the Holocaust. Her work includes exploring the Colleges’ archives and interviewing Herzog’s friends and family members.
“These stories are a really important way to ensure that we do not forget a dark part of our history,” says Crocetta.
On campus, Crocetta served as a Writing Fellow. She was Jewish Education Chair on the Hillel board and was accepted to participate in the Human Rights and Genocide Symposium. She was an America Reads tutor, a Writing Colleague and a member of Koshare. She worked as a writer in Office of Communications and continues to do freelance work.