Chatham Professor and Writer Marc Nieson has Been a Busy Bee
Marc Nieson takes a photo of his reflection at his writing studio in Braddock. (Courtesy of Marc Nieson)
Associate Professor of English Marc Nieson’s journey as a creative writer wasn’t always a straight path. It may be more like a beautiful rollercoaster.
From accounting to moviemaking, Nieson has experienced an array of vocations that have taken him around the world—until a passion for the written word consumed him and ultimately brought him to Chatham University.
“I never thought of myself as having a career,” Nieson said, reflecting on his many accomplishments and passions. When asked about his pull to creative writing, Nieson shared, “It’s not something I’ve always wanted to do from when I was little.”
His first calling was art. “When I was a kid, I did a lot of visual art. I was always drawing,” Nieson said. But when his fifth-grade art teacher pushed him to enroll in an art workshopping class, Nieson felt he didn’t excel at the basics of drawing and shading. “At 12 years old, I quit,” he said. “It’s still something that scares me a little. When I get tired of words, I think I’ll go there again.”
Once he graduated high school, he wasn’t sure where to turn. “I had no idea what I was doing for the longest time,” Nieson said. After some deliberation, he ended up going to a small tech school. During his second year, though, a realization hit him. “I looked up one day, and I was putting little numbers in little boxes. I said, ‘I don’t think this is going to work.’”
So, after earning his associate’s degree in business administration, he switched gears, finishing his undergrad at New York University in filmmaking. Since then, he’s worked on many award-winning films, primarily writing and producing. “The Speed of Life” (2007)—cowritten with Nieson’s longtime friend, Ed Radtke—features “The Bear” and “Shameless” star Jeremy Allen White.
Over the next three years, Nieson bounced between New York and Italy, working in film and teaching English-as-a-second-language to Italian students. Soon, he reached his next epiphany.
“I learned that what I like most about filmmaking is the writing,” he said. “I could sit in a room, alone, and all I have to buy is a pen and paper.”
So he decided to go back to school again. “Every time I stopped going to school, I never thought I’d go back,” he said. Nieson went to the University of Iowa, where he received his MFA in Creative Writing with a focus in fiction.
“When I went to Iowa in the ’90s, what was popular at that time was what they called ‘dirty realism.’ Minimalist, very real things,” Nieson described. He found this genre especially captivating. He read works by Salman Rushdie, Italo Calvino, Toni Morrison, Jeanette Winterson, and Gabriel García Márquez. Nieson began finding his writing niche.
Since then, Nieson’s authored essays, presentations, a memoir, and (his favorite) many short stories, which have earned him a slew of awards, such as a Raymond Carver Short Story Award and a Literal Latte Fiction Award.
“I’ve never been hugely interested in publishing,” he said. “There was one story I wrote that I remember when I got accepted, I felt good because of who accepted it. It was a journal called Conjunctions,” he said. The story was “The Fortune of Cities.”
“Interestingly, that story was born out of one of the field seminars from Chatham, where I took students to Puerto Rico years back.”
Marc poses for a photos for Carve Magazine. (Courtesy of Carve Magazine)
After graduating from Iowa, Nieson found his way back to education. He began teaching for Elderhostel, now called Road Scholar, a Montessori school prioritizing hands-on-learning.
“I teach as a practitioner,” he said. “I can’t lecture.” Neison’s classes typically take place around a circular table—and if you’re lucky enough to be in one of his night classes, you’ll bask in the relaxing ambience he establishes with tealight candles and genuine conversation.
“Teaching has allowed me to write,” he said. Nieson calls it “a patron system.”
Just as Nieson impacts his students, the classroom has helped him to grow as a writer. “I’m having to read more and read in areas I wouldn’t necessarily read. And that always informs you as a writer. Reading is what you have to do. And you have to read people that are better than you,” Nieson said. “It’s like getting on a tennis court with someone that’s better than you. You’ll end up playing better.”
When asked why he chooses to write, Nieson said, “It’s a challenge. It’s hard. At times, beyond frustrating, depressing, but temperamentally, it fits me. To sit alone in a room and make things up feels very comfortable. You know, apart from becoming a monk, I don’t know how else I could get away with sitting in a room and contemplating.”
And though Nieson prepares to take a well-earned sabbatical in the spring term (to the dismay of his loyal student fan base), his work continues.
“As a part of my sabbatical, I’m going back to Venice. It’s been over 30 years since I’ve lived there,” he said. There, he will write about climate change and how it is affecting the city.
Lyn Bigley ’26 is currently pursuing her BFA in creative writing alongside a BA in psychology. She works as a library aide and a digital content creator for Chatham University. In her downtime, she enjoys looking at pictures of animals, playing video games, impulse buying, and watching reality TV.