Book tours, ACLU, and Spirituality: Honors Alumnus Nathalie Amazan describes her journey post-UMass

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Commonwealth Honors College alum Nathalie Amazan `20 recently published her first collection of poems, Still, (now available for pre-order) and is currently on a book tour across America, all the while working as a paralegal for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). In this interview, Amazan describes her journey after UMass Amherst, how she landed her book tour, and the work she’s been doing with the ACLU so far.

What happened after you graduated from UMass? What was next?

[I graduated at the start of the pandemic,] so there was a lot happening then, like mass uprisings, and a lot of energy just transpiring around us. I was involved in some of the protests that happened here in New York, I did a couple of poetry workshops and readings for groups who were thinking about using this moment to move forward, and I worked on creative workshops with some communities out in Brooklyn as well.

During my time at UMass, I interned at the ACLU, so post-graduation, I worked on a campaign for my former supervisor who was running for Manhattan and wrote a policy paper around restorative justice for him. At this time, I was also developing a deeper sense of my own spirituality and spiritual practices, so it was an intense time of reflection and introspection for me. All of this was happening while I was writing and compiling my work into what would become Still, so I was doing a lot of deep introspection, spiritual searching, and seeking work.

In the fall after graduation, I worked as a paralegal for a private injury firm and left that position when I got hired at ACLU at the start of 2021, and I’ve been working there since! I was still writing Still at the time, and got it published with a press, and now I’m working on new poetry and building myself within the greater artist's community in New York.

I also converted to Islam in 2020, and have been using my thoughts and my experiences from UMass as an organizer to help inform and organize within the Muslim community here in New York, specifically the queer Muslim community, and just connecting us together.

I've been all over the place the past few years, but a lot of it has been rooted in trying to build a deeper sense of community, oneness, and interconnectedness with other people. We're just struggling to survive, and I wanted to develop this sense through spirituality, poetry, and in many other ways.

How did you write Still? What was the process behind this collection?

I was just itching to have some sort of collected body of work. I started writing Still in 2021, and I had been writing poetry for [so many] years, but I didn’t have any collection of work. I'm not in school right now and I was thinking about how to make a better name for myself within the poetry world that isn't attached to an institution, so I wanted my poems to be picked up by a publishing company and to have that legitimacy in the eyes of other poets and the public and to have a body of work out there.

I wanted the collection to mean something to the moments that we're living in and to be as timeless as possible.

Still is a response to what the social political climate from 2016 to 2022 was in the US and around the world, but it's also, for me, a testament of a belief and a sense of peace and justice amidst all the instability and injustice in the world, and a declaration that love is possible within this and that love is a manifestation of the love that I felt, and the love that I have felt between other people and myself that I see, so I put [those feelings] into writing.

It took about a year, maybe a little less, to pull the collection together because most of the poems were already written anyways [between 2016 to 2022], so it was just piling them together in a way that made sense, and then editing them and workshopping them. I had a lot of first drafts that became second drafts, and third drafts, and fourth drafts, until I eventually got what is now Still.

How’s the book tour been? What’s that experience like?

It's been really great! The book right now is on pre-order and the physical book is with me on this tour. It’s a little different than conventional book tours; normally you would have the book and do signings, so that part is missing but it doesn't feel like it's missing. It still feels complete with the poems that I'm performing, and the people that I'm meeting, and there's been some shows that are pretty small but also some were pretty big. Regardless of the size, every show, people leave feeling like they were just in a room filled with magic. It is a really beautiful feeling, to witness that and to be told that you play a part in facilitating [such an environment], so it's been wonderful.

I have a couple of shows coming up that aren't technically a part of the book tour, but I’ll be featuring my poems in the next couple of weeks here in the city, and I have one more show that's officially part of the bookstore, that's going to be out in Long Island. It's just been awesome to just be making all these connections, but the most important thing for me is to get as many pre-orders in as possible in this period.

What have you been doing with the ACLU?

It's been really meaningful to be a part of the immigrants’ rights project at the ACLU. [This project] protects the civil rights and liberties of immigrants, and challenges federal laws and policies that restrict their rights, like seeking asylum or moving freely within the US to be reunited with their families. A lot of the work that I do is supporting the attorneys who are on our project.

I produce and format our briefs and then get it filed with the federal courts, which helps to cite the briefs. I make sure it's all aligned with the formatting rules and file it with the federal system; a lot of times if you don't pay attention to the finer detail, the court can just throw away your brief and not hear your case, so my part is crucial to the nitty gritty of it. I assist attorneys with other things they need help with as well, like with research, their admissions into certain courts, or any other logistics on the back end.

What is the driving force or passion behind your work?

It's the conviction that the world I was born into isn't the world that I want to leave it as when I die. There’s so much violence and trauma within this world that impacts all of us, and I think I've been given a gift of writing and using my words to do my part in healing that, and so I want to respect and be grateful towards that gift, and use it in a way that benefits the world and benefits us.

Do you have a message for UMass Amherst students as they make their way to graduation?

To keep an open mind and an open heart to wherever you feel like you're being called to, and to not be resistant to that call—listen to it and to lean into it with curiosity.

With all that you’ve done so far, there’s only one question left: What’s next?

It's exciting to think about these things! I'm working on putting some poetry into music, so I’m working with a producer to turn this one poem into a song, hopefully out by next month. In the long run, I’d like to start working on another collection of poetry, maybe a poem of sonnets or something to that effect. I'm also starting law school in the fall—I just committed to St. John's University and I start in August!