Courtney Ebert
Fiction | Cleveland State University | Class of 2021
Courtney's short stories juxtapose Amy Hempel sentences and Joy Williams movement to wonderful effect. She creates worlds that are both familiar and strange in the most interesting ways, and she's able to use both humor and horror in a manner that feels both fresh and necessary. I'm reminded of the opening to David Lynch's Blue Velvet when I read Courtney's work: beneath the deceptively placid calm of quiet Rust Belt towns lies something both very human and very disturbing, in the best possible way. —Imad Rahman
About Courtney
Courtney Ebert holds a BA in French and Creative Writing from Bowling Green State University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the NEOMFA program through Cleveland State University. She was a finalist for the 2018 Gordon Square Review fiction contest. She is a two-time recipient of the Leonard Trawick scholarship at CSU and a recipient of the Creative Writing Contest scholarship at CSU.
COURTNEY'S FAST FACTS
What’s your cure for hiccups?
I had the hiccups every day for several months in high school. There was no way to get rid of them. I tried everything. My classmates tried everything. Eventually, I stopped having them as frequently, but still get them off and on. The world record for hiccupping is 68 years by Charles Osborne.
What’s your preferred method for eating a cupcake? Frosting first, then cake? Bottom then top? Equal rationing of frosting to cake? Please describe.
I eat the frosting off the cupcake and the cake goes in the trash or to a friend. It is preferable if there is just a jar of frosting and no cake at all. Cake is very dry.
Do you have any eccentric habits/strategies to get you started writing? What are they?
It can take days for me to start writing. I have to force myself to go to a coffee shop, drink a lot of coffee, put on trance music, and stare at my computer for several hours before anything really happens. It is exhausting, I don’t know how anyone does it.
© 2021 NEOMFA
English Department
Cleveland State University
2121 Euclid Ave., RT 1815
Cleveland, Ohio 44115