Eric Sandy
Creative Nonfiction | Cleveland State University | Class of 2022
In the face of impending climate disaster, what’s a young man to do? Go golfing. Grocery shop. Shovel the snow. In his engaging blend of personal essay, journalism, and cultural analysis, Eric Sandy manages to place the greatest concerns of our age into human scale. His collection, Signal Tree, tracks a narrative through an everyman’s life in Northeast Ohio, each essay an attempt to balance anxiety and action, mindfulness and hope, the global and the local. His ambitious reach for understanding is matched by his humility of interpretation. Eric’s the guy you’d want to be having a beer with the night before the world ends.—David Giffels
About Eric
Eric Sandy is a reporter and editor who writes about drugs, civil rights and climate narratives. He holds a B.S. in Journalism from Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism. He was a 2021 finalist for the Livingston Award. https://ericsandy.com
ERIC'S FAST FACTS
What’s on your nightstand right now?
I’m reading Jonathan Franzen’s Crossroads and Jon Mooallem’s Serious Face. Mooallem’s style was a big influence on me as I got into the NEOMFA program. Crossroads is incredible so far.
Your favorite place to write while in the NEOMFA?
We inherited a wooden workbench in our basement when we moved to Cuyahoga Falls. A great, massive slab of wood. I’m not much of a carpenter, but it’s been terrific for writing.
What are your favorite words? Why?
“Insouciance,” but I rarely use that one. How about “paranoia”? There’s a lot of that going around, and it just looks great on the page.
© 2021 NEOMFA
English Department
Cleveland State University
2121 Euclid Ave., RT 1815
Cleveland, Ohio 44115