Samantha Facciolo

Long Neck

Samantha Facciolo

Emerging
Literature: Fiction

“I fell in love with reading as a preschooler and with writing as a means of further exploring the storybook worlds I loved best.”

It was in second grade that Samantha Facciolo first realized that her “zeal for writing” was markedly different from that of her classmates. When her teacher doled out a writing exercise, Facciolo “turned in a composition notebook with a 22-page story . . . in progress!”

The first book that cemented her great love for literature was Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie, which “captured my imagination . . . and set me up for a lifelong appreciation of historical fiction.” Facciolo has also always loved the natural world, and in high school she was introduced to the lyrical work of Mary Oliver, whose poems “offer a dose of inspiration.”

Though it was clear that Facciolo loved writing early on, it wasn’t until her senior year in college – when she was able to fit a fiction workshop into her class schedule – that she considered writing as a career. After graduation from American University, she spent several years teaching. But “every fall, as I set up my classroom . . . I envisioned the day I’d return as a student.” And in 2016 Facciolo realized that dream, entering New York University, where in 2019 she earned an MFA degree in Creative Writing.

excerpt from Stone Harbor, 2023

1937

Autumn descended in all its fullness, ushering in golden afternoons, cool nights, and a general slowing of days. The island seemed to reclaim itself after the hustle of the summer crowd, and in a way, time, no longer filled with parties, dinners, and social events, did too.

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During her time at NYU, Facciolo also took journalism classes and parlayed those studies into a thriving freelance career, with over three dozen articles in major regional and national publications. But fiction writing remained her goal: Her MFA thesis was an early draft of a historical fiction work, Stone Harbor. It was excerpts from that novel – now almost ready for publication – that garnered her the Division’s Emerging Fiction award.

Although a more recent resident of the beach community of Long Neck, Facciolo has still drawn on that environment to tell a tale that is set in a real place. One of the challenges of writing this type of historical fiction is the delicate task of “balancing historical accuracy with creative interpretation.”

Facciolo strives to truthfully portray the “people, places, and establishments that existed at the time of the novel.” Stone Harbor examines “grief, healing, and the power of unexpected chances through the fictionalized lens of a woman struggling to reinvent her life during the Great Depression.”

While in graduate school, Facciolo discovered that “the antidote to a long day of classes and writing is a couple of hours spent at the barn,” and she has translated her love of horses into work as a certified equine therapist. She’s also an athlete and a marathon runner who has twice competed in and completed the famed Boston Marathon.

Facciolo’s writing practice itself didn’t change during the pandemic, but what did evolve was “my experience of a writing community.” Formerly able to travel easily to graduate school or on journalistic assignments, Facciolo was grateful for the “plethora of virtual readings and literary events that cropped up in 2020 and 2021,” and she continues this online artistic practice today.

Facciolo intends to use her fellowship to pursue historical research and attend writing lectures and conferences, activities that were curtailed during the pandemic. The award will also allow her to meet other Division Fellows and to “deepen my connection to the local writing and artist communities,” crucial adjuncts to the essentially “solitary act” of writing.

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