Seth Abramson
Seth Abramson (born October 31, 1976) is an American professor, attorney, author, political columnist, and poet. He is the editor of the "Best American Experimental Writing" series and wrote a bestselling trilogy of nonfiction works detailing the foreign policy agenda and political scandals of former president Donald Trump. Early life and education. Abramson is a graduate of Dartmouth College (1998), Harvard Law School (2001), the Iowa Writers' Workshop (2009), and the doctoral program in English at University of Wisconsin–Madison (2010; 2016). Career. Abramson was a trial attorney for the New Hampshire Public Defender from 2001 to 2007 . Abramson became an assistant professor of communication arts and sciences at University of New Hampshire in 2015, and was made affiliate faculty at the New Hampshire Institute of Art in 2018. His teaching areas include digital journalism, post-internet cultural theory, post-internet writing, and legal advocacy. Abramson has written for publications like "The Washington Post", "Dallas Morning News", "The Seattle Times", "Newsweek", "Indiewire", and "The Guardian". In 2011, "Publishers Weekly" wrote that he had "picked up a very large following as a blogger and commentator, covering poetry, politics, and higher education, and generating a controversial, "U.S. News"–style ranking of  graduate programs in writing." During the Trump administration, Abramson was a CNN legal analyst. US political writing. During the 2016 Democratic primary race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, Abramson supported Sanders. He authored what Jonathan Chait of "New York Magazine" called "a cult-favorite series of Bernie [Sanders] delegate-math fan fiction." Philip Bump of "The Washington Post" took issue with Abramson's analyses, calling them "empty theory, unproven...but innovative." Writing in "The Chicago Tribune", Stephen Stromberg called Abramson a "Sanders zealot...[in] reality-denial." "The Atlantic", citing an article by Abramson in which he referred to his  writing on the Democratic primary as "experimental journalism," attributed Abramson's articles not to his political leanings but his self-identification as a "metamodernist creative writer." "Politico" concurred, referring to Abramson's political commentary as "verses from the abstract." After the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Abramson received widespread attention for his Twitter threads alleging collusion between the Trump campaign and foreign governments, especially Russia, but also Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel. According to "The Washington Post": In November 2018, Abramson published the "New York Times" bestselling book "Proof of Collusion" (Simon & Schuster), which sought to establish "proof of collusion  in the Trump-Russia case." "Kirkus Reviews" called the book "spirited, thorough, and thunderously foreboding." A contrary view appeared in the "Herald" (Scotland), noting that "suggestive juxtapositions notwithstanding, we end up with something closer to the Scottish 'not proven' verdict with its unique mix of moral conviction of guilt and inability to conclusively prove the case." A sequel to "Proof of Collusion", "Proof of Conspiracy", was published by St. Martin's Press in September 2019, and was also a "New York Times" bestseller. The final book in the Proof trilogy, "Proof of Corruption," was published by St. Martin's Press  in September 2020 and was named a "USA Today" bestseller. "Kirkus Reviews" called "Proof of Corruption" "careful and exhaustive," concluding that it makes a "strong case for Trump's outsized, boundless corruption." In October 2020, Abramson, former "Vice" contributing editor Thomas Morton, and Connect3 Media (a division of Cineflix) published a ten-episode, limited-series pre-election podcast, "Proof: A Pre-election Podcast Special", to summarize key aspects of the "Proof" book trilogy. Abramson thereafter launched a Substack publication entitled "Proof". Creative writing and editorship. Abramson has published a number of poetry books and anthologies. "Colorado Review" called "Northerners", Abramson 's second collection of poetry, "alternately expansive and deeply personal...of crystalline beauty and complexity," terming Abramson "a major American voice," and "Notre Dame Review" echoed the sentiment. Abramson and poet Jesse Damiani have been series co-editor of the annual anthology of innovative verse, "Best American Experimental Writing", since its inception with Omnidawn in 2012. The series was picked up by Wesleyan University Press in 2014. Guest editors for the series have included Cole Swensen (2014), Douglas Kearney (2015), Charles Bernstein and Tracie Morris (2016), Myung Mi Kim (2018), and Carmen Maria Machado and Joyelle McSweeney (2019). The MFA  Research Project. Between 2007 and 2014, Abramson authored "The MFA Research Project" (MRP), a website that published indexes of creative writing Master of Fine Arts (MFA) programs based on surveys and other data. Indexes appearing on the MRP included ordered listings of program popularity, funding, selectivity, fellowship placement, job placement, student-faculty ratio, application cost, application response times, application and curriculum requirements, and foundation dates. The MRP also published surveys of current MFA applicants and various creative writing programs. "The Chronicle of Higher Education" termed the "Poets & Writers" national assessment methodology "comprehensive" and "the only MFA ranking regime." Writing for  The Cambridge Companion to American Poetry Since 1945, Hank Lazer described Abramson's project as "a daring and data-rich endeavor." "The Missouri Review" observed that Abramson, along with novelist Tom Kealey, "had done a tremendous amount of work to peel back the layers of MFA programs and get applicants to make informed decisions." The data was not without its critics. In September 2011, a critical open letter signed by professors from undergraduate and graduate creative writing programs was published. Data from the MRP had been regularly published by "Poets & Writers" between 2008 and 2013. The magazine's Editorial Director  Mary Gannon said of Abramson, the rankings' primary researcher, that he "has been collecting data about applicants' preferences and about MFA programs for five years, and we stand behind his integrity." Reception. Poetry. "Publishers Weekly" describes Abramson as "serious and ambitious... uncommonly interested in general statements, in hard questions, and harder answers, about how to live." Abramson won the 2008 J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize from "Poetry". Editor Don Share said of Abramson's "What I Have," "The poem absorbs certain details but doesn't fasten upon them the way poets are tempted to do; it's not  adjectival, it's not descriptive, it's not painting a kind of canvas with scenery on it, and yet those details are really fascinating." Journalism. In 2019, a "Playboy" interviewer said "Abramson helped pioneer the literary form of the Twitter 'thread'" and, speaking of his 2018 book "Proof of Collusion", credited "the eccentric New Hampshirite" for "his meticulous attention to the evidence of Trumpworld's alleged collusion with the Kremlin." His style of writing was described by "Playboy" as "left-brained gonzo." Avi Selk of "The Washington Post" wrote that Abramson became "virally popular by reframing a complex tangle of  public reporting on the Russia scandal into a story so simple it can be laid out in daily tweets", that his analysis has "many leaps", and that his sources "range in quality from investigative news articles to off-the-wall Facebook posts and tweets from Tom Arnold". Writers at "The New Republic" and "The Atlantic" have described Abramson as a conspiracy theorist. Ben Mathis-Lilley of "Slate" argues that Abramson is "not making things up" but "recycling information you could find on any news site and adding sinister what-if hypotheticals to create conclusions that he refers to... as 'investigatory  analyses.'" An article in "Columbia Journalism Review" similarly critiqued Abramson's method of "curatorial journalism." Other media outlets have supported Abramson's analyses. "The Chronicle of Higher Education" notes that Abramson often "feuds with anti-Trump conspiracy theorists whom he sees linking to dubious sources and making claims without evidence." Virginia Heffernan writes in "Politico" that Abramson's "theory-testing" is "urgently important." "Der Spiegel" calls Abramson "a quintessential American figure: an underdog who became an involuntary hero." "The New York Observer" writes that "events like Trump's 2013 trip to Russia for Miss Universe were covered extensively on Abramson 's feed prior to the mainstream media catching on, a fact that has given him a reputation for being early to connect events within the broader Russia story." Selected works. Books. Nonfiction Reference Poetry Anthology Anthologies. Academic Prose Poetry