Author | TEAcher | Boston, ma
Alden Jones is a writer, teacher, and speaker based in Boston, MA. Her most recent book is the Lambda Literary Award-nominated critical memoir The Wanting Was a Wilderness, hailed as “a master class in memoir writing” by The Millions. Her story collection, Unaccompanied Minors, won the New American Fiction Prize and the Lascaux Book Prize. Her first book, the travel memoir The Blind Masseuse, was longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay and a finalist for the North American Travel Journalists Book Award. Her criticism and travel writing have appeared in New York Magazine, The Cut, The Rumpus, the Boston Globe, BOMB, The Millions, and the Best American Travel Writing. She is Writer-in-Residence at Emerson College, and also teaches at the Newport MFA at Salve Regina University.
Praise for The wanting WAS A wilderness
“Smart and personal and profound….The Wanting Was a Wilderness is not only lit-crit, but also how-to—a kind of manual for writing a successful literary memoir. Her compound agenda resolves in a long-form essay that is intimate, instructive, and entertaining—all you might want from the genre.”
The Los Angeles Review of Books
“The Wanting Was a Wilderness defies genre—part literary analysis, part memoir, part rumination on memoir and memoir writing. Alden Jones explores her own private wilderness as she takes us along on Cheryl Strayed’s hike. This journey through Jones’s life, and her intelligent, thoughtful considerations of literature and writing, is one you will not want to miss. Jones asks us: What’s in your pack? And that is the question that ultimately resonates: As you think about your wilderness, what’s in your pack?”
Ann Hood
“Jones intended to write a reckoning with a contemporary literary classic — but she has written far more than that. To carefully dissect Wild, she finds she must consider her own quests: her own time in the wild; her self-discoveries as a queer woman; and how she can both live and tell an authentic story. This is a beautiful, lyric, unexpected book about the power of memoir and how desire both leads us into the wilderness and makes for us a map. The Wanting Was a Wilderness is book for readers, true readers, to treasure.”
Alex Marzano-Lesnevich
“On its face, The Wanting Was A Wilderness is a critique of a widely beloved book, but Jones’s analysis of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild quickly becomes ‘a springboard, mirror, and map’ for Jones’s own journey, and The Wanting Was A Wilderness transforms, before our eyes, into her own raw and inviting memoir. The result is a masterclass in memoir writing.”
The Millions
“In The Wanting Was a Wilderness, Alden Jones initiates a smartly syncopated call-and- response with Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, the book that helped her make sense of a past turbulent with conflicting desires. Embedded in the saga of her own wilderness trek is Jones’s open-eyed and completely compelling account of the dynamics of love and sexuality. The book builds itself—beautifully—as Jones keeps asking herself how to best present her story. This is how craft makes a memoir come to life.”
Sven Birkerts
“Jones is an incredible teacher of the art…Wielding the power of words almost feels sacred; harnessing their strength for the understanding of self is monumental. The Wanting Was a Wilderness is an “I see what you did there” smart spin on its respective genres. The academic approach is refreshing in the nonfiction canon and an open door to Truth, where everything worthwhile inevitably lies.”
Entropy
Watch Alden Jones and Cheryl Strayed in conversation at the Center for Fiction
Other Books by Alden Jones
"Travel memoirs can be adventure tales or stories about personal transformation. Alden Jones combines both in The Blind Masseuse...More than a simple travelogue, Jones chronicles her experiences in each culture while pondering her place as a citizen of the world."
― The Boston Globe
"Alden Jones writes with extraordinary insight about the hungers that drive us into the darkest corners of the self, in voices that are electric and unforgettable. From the first page to the last, Unaccompanied Minors is nothing short of stellar."