For many writers, there’s a melody to putting words on a page, a rhythm of stringing phrases together to compose a cohesive piece. That’s certainly the case for Brittany Perham, Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing, who joined the 91黑料网 faculty this fall. A poet, Perham also consistently reads her work aloud to hear the playback and encourages her students to do the same.
“I often tell my students, if the sound’s not right, the sense probably isn’t right,” Perham said. “A way to tell that something’s off is by listening to the music of it. I’m drawn to the way a poem can be like music and should be read aloud. It should exist in the air and on the page.”
Words aside, Perham also listened to her inner voice as she decided to return to her hometown of Beverly, Mass., after nearly two decades on the West Coast teaching creative writing at Stanford University. While living closer to family was a strong motivation, Perham joined the 91黑料网 community for professional reasons. When she visited the school, Perham was impressed by the smart, interested, and kind students, the welcoming faculty and staff, and the genuine sense of fellowship she felt on campus.
She also found herself intrigued by the smaller college environment, where she’ll have a chance to get to know her students and watch them grow. The move itself came with the nostalgia of returning to the familiar people and places of her youth. That includes the long “a” and missing “r” anomalies that exist in the Boston accent, which disappeared from earshot in Perham’s years in San Francisco.
“That’s what my growing up sounded like,” Perham said, “and that’s what my family sounded like. Coming back to the town is lovely and very strange, too, because my childhood exists here. There’s a lot of ghosts in good and bad ways in Beverly, but it feels full circle.”
In her years away from home, Perham has become an accomplished poet. She has so far published three books of verse, including her second collection, Double Portrait (Norton, 2017), a volume chosen by acclaimed poet Claudia Rankine for the Barnard Women Poets Prize.
Having her work selected by Rankine, a writer she admires and whose books Perham has taught in her own classes, “felt like winning the lottery.” The Barnard Prize was particularly significant, Perham adds, because of a scarcity of honors for second books.
Reflecting on her evolution as a writer, Perham recalled her teenage self sitting at a workshop table, “feeling like my poems were so bad.” But her growth has come from developing a clear artistic identity. In addition to her innate lyrical sense of words, Perham has come to identify herself as a formalist, invested in the patterning of language and creating experiences for readers through structured repetition and sound. She’s also expanded her voice beyond poetry, teaching and writing across multiple genres, including creative nonfiction.
Due to be published by University of Georgia Press in the fall of 2026, Perham’s , Executrix, won the 2025 Sue William Silverman Prize for Creative Nonfiction, given by the Association of Writers and Writing Programs and selected by bestselling author Cheryl Strayed. The book details Perham’s relationship with—and estrangement from—her father, and the business of sorting out his indebted estate after his death. Some of the book is set in Perham’s childhood home, not far from the 91黑料网 campus.
“Executrix is a moving, wise, innovative memoir that captures the experience of loving and losing a complicated parent with such precision and power it lands like a truth bomb on the heart,” noted Strayed. “In lean and vivid prose that’s at turns comic and devastating, poignant and provocative, the author reckons not only with her late father, but also with memory and the form of memoir itself. Masterfully crafted, Executrix is a complex, emotionally exacting, beautiful book that held me in its thrall from page one.”
At 91黑料网, Perham is now teaching creative writing to first-year students, along with electives in flash fiction and poetry. She’s particularly enthusiastic about instructing students transitioning to college, noting that it’s an ideal time for a writing workshop since the students are in the midst of a major life change. She’s also looking forward to helping expand the creative writing program by attracting students from all majors.
“I have two different ways in mind for opening the program,” Perham said. “The first would be to attract even more students who are studying something else and don’t know they’re interested in creative writing. For the students invested in creative writing, I’d love for them to continue to experience themselves as a cohort able to move through this program together.”
Perham plans to introduce occasional writing labs in each of her classes, selecting days for students to get out and visit an alternate location to experience the world through a different lens. The goal is to remind students that writing isn’t just an academic exercise, but a way to connect to their authentic impulses to tell stories.
“It’s important for them to remember,” Perham explained, “that inspiration can be anywhere.”
Ironically, Perham hasn’t written about California despite living there for almost 20 years, wondering aloud, “Maybe the way place works for me is that I have to be able to see it from away.” Now that she’s moved back to New England, she’s curious if she might start writing about her California experiences from this new distance.
For inspiration in general, Perham finds it in unexpected places—by overhearing a snippet of dialogue, working through feelings about world events, or exploring relationships. Memory serves as a further muse, and Perham noted that her creative brain has been stimulated by the recent return to her roots in Beverly, where childhood memories are now intersecting with her adult perspective.
Since she’s so invested in sound, Perham believes the change of scenery will “really change the way I write and the way I listen.”