Spring Campaign for Writers at the Edge

This week, meet Mesa Refuge Alum Alex Park

“When I applied to the Mesa Refuge, it had only just occurred to me that I was writing a book. In those early days of the project, I was elated at times, just knowing that I’d found something that could hold my interest for years and carry a book. But along with that excitement, there was also the sensation—a feeling every writer knows—that what thrilled me might never hold an audience. Or worse, that the idea itself could work but that I didn’t have the gumption or the ability to realize it. This is one of the reasons writing can be so difficult. Long before a book lands at the edge of a wider conversation, it starts as an idea at the edge of the author’s own imagination, and that is a precarious place to keep anything.

Read Alex’s article on The New Republic website (2022): “The Fight for $15 Is Moving Beyond the Minimum Wage With a Bold New Idea.”

When I came to Mesa, I went upstairs with boxes of research materials, still balancing that sense of possibility. But for the first time, I felt my resolve growing stronger. After many rejections and setbacks, I was surrounded by peers who, like me, had their own doubts but also their own ambitions. Most of all, I had the support of this storied institution. So I went to work, bringing my idea from the edge of my mind to the edge of a public conversation. And years later, when I feel wary, I think back to my time at Mesa Refuge, and how a few people who didn’t know me at all read something I wrote and said, ‘this deserves a chance.’”

Alex Park (Michael Pollan Journalism Fellow 2018 and board member) is a journalist and researcher with an interest in the evolution of global systems of trade, finance, and agriculture. His work has been published in The New Republic, Mother Jones, Al Jazeera, and many other publications. Find out more about him on his website.

Will you support writers like Alex Park by donating to our spring campaign?
DONATE HERE

Campaign photos by Jean Melesaine