Today we’d like to introduce you to Dana Shavin.
Hi Dana, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I had always “played around” with art because my mother was very creative–an interior designer and an amateur art teacher. Likewise, I began keeping a journal at age twelve, thanks to my older sister, who encouraged me to write everything down. When I went to college (Bard College in upstate NY), I wanted to pursue creative writing, but they didn’t have a creative writing major, so I majored in psychology. I continued to dabble in writing throughout college, and all through graduate school (MS in Psychology).
I landed my first post-grad job in the tiny north Georgia town of Lafayette. Unfortunately, I got so burned out on my job as a therapist in the community mental health system that I left my entire mental health career behind ten years later. I was already writing for small local arts and entertainment newspapers when a chance meeting with an artist who was making his living on the art fair circuit brought me around full circle to how much I’d loved art as a child. I was elated to see, through him, a way out of the mental health work I no longer loved, and into work I had always loved (art) but had never thought could be viable. I threw myself into pottery making and painting, joined the art fair circuit, and, to my elation, at the same time got hired by my local newspaper, the Chattanooga Times Free Press, to write a monthly column. I have been a columnist ever since–23 years–and have won a number of journalism awards.
Along the way I also started submitting work to literary journals and freelancing for magazines. I’ve now written for a whole bunch of magazines including Garden and Gun, Oxford American, Parade, The Sun, Psychology Today, Bark, The Writer, AARP, and many others; my favorite topics are mental health, relationships, and well-being.
Last year I started a Literary Arts program at the Dalton Creative Arts Guild in Dalton, Georgia. There, I organize writing classes, teach writing workshops, and run writing groups.
I’m the author of two books, “The Body Tourist,” about my struggle to recover from anorexia nervosa while in graduate school, and “Finding the World: Thoughts on Life, Love, Home and Dogs,” a collection of my most popular columns.
In addition to the writing, I continue to paint, and I have been building table-top sized houses out of salvaged wood. The inspiration for these is the houses I lived in when I was struggling to recover, houses I wrote about in depth in The Body Tourist. It has been an interesting project because I know nothing about working with power tools or wood! I’ve gotten a few pointers so I don’t saw an arm off, but I feel like the inherent flaws in the finished pieces speak to the state of my body and mind at the time I lived in those houses. I also feel the use of salvaged wood speaks to the period of time in which I was attempting to salvage what was left of my body.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Nothing about writing or making art is a smooth process. The writing of a book is a long, hard, journey no matter who you are or what your circumstances, and the number of rejections along the way is staggering. I wrote The Body Tourist over the course of about 10-12 years, which included countless revisions and rewrites. I worked with two mentors, and fed the entire book to my writers group page by page, painstakingly going through all their thoughts and suggestions for revision.
The process of then seeking an agent/publisher was gutting, as each one had a different submission format and all formats require a huge amount of writing and summarizing of your project. And because the number of writers that agents/publishers sign is minuscule, and determined by factors often writers can’t possibly know about or foresee, I never knew if I was just about to hit the jackpot or way off base. I finally signed with a small independent publisher in 2014, and had a wonderful publishing experience with The Body Tourist.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am a freelance writer, a visual artist (paintings and wood sculptures), and the Literary Arts Program Coordinator for the Dalton Creative Arts Guild in Dalton, Georgia. I recently received my second literary arts grant, this one to create workshops that underserved kids age 12-18 can access from anywhere online (graphic novel, sci fi, and creative nonfiction). I am also now a publishing coach, helping writers at various stages in their careers understand the publishing world, and working with them to perfect their pitches, queries, and articles or essays. (More at Danashavin.com)
In my freelance work I write about relationships, mental heath, dementia, and well being for a variety of magazines including Psychology Today, AARP, the PBS outlet NextAvenue, Verywell Mind, and the American Animal Hospital Association, to name just a few.
Re: my sculptural houses: In my decades-long quest to recover from anorexia nervosa, beginning in my twenties, I was tasked with “rebuilding” my body even as I entertained the ongoing urge to abandon it to starvation. Central to my life during my illness, and later, in the early years of my recovery, were a series of dilapidated rental houses to which I was drawn. At the time, I found them romantic in the way that an unreliable love interest can become, in part because of their very unreliability, a person of intrigue and desire. I later realized that in loving these houses, I was attempting to find love for my imperfect, flawed, run-down (due to anorexia) self. Fascinated by the metaphor of the house as body, it was not enough for me to write about them in The Body Tourist; all these years later, I am bringing them to life as sculptures made of wood, cardboard, roofing tar, and more. One of them, Singlewide, is currently on exhibit at the Decatur, Georgia library show, Gimme Shelter.
I am most proud of my long run as a columnist, and my book, The Body Tourist. I am also proud of the fact that I left a career in which I was unhappy to pursue a life that has resonated with me deeply.
Is there anyone you’d like to thank or give credit to?
I’ve had a number of writing mentors, none more important to me or more helpful than the writer Therese Eiben.
My husband has always encouraged me, believed in me, and cheered me on; his favorite line, when I’m feeling bad about myself, is “If you met yourself on the street, you’d be intimidated by you.” 🙂
My long-time writers group, the Radish Farm Writers, made up of Linda Voychehovski, Kris Whorton, and Mimi Hedwig, has been there for me throughout.
Contact Info:
- Website:
- Writing website: danashavin.com
- Art website: danashavinartist.com
- Instagram: @danashavin
- Facebook: Dana Shavin (personal) and Dana Shavin Writes (professional)
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/danaliseart
