Assistant Editor Haley Crigger: In part 2 of our Writers’ Day Jobs double feature this week, we are thrilled to share our interview with Aleyna Rentz, a Pushcart Prize winner, Cincinnati Review contributor (Issue 18.2), and dear friend. We attended the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars together, and one of my favorite memories is when Danielle Evans, our professor at the time, referred to Aleyna’s writing style as “adorable, but sinister.” Everyone in the class laughed—we had all been taken on Aleyna’s disarmingly hilarious, unbelievably clever narrative rides, thinking we were in on the meticulously crafted joke, only to be humbled, and very possibly heartbroken, in the end. Reading Aleyna’s work is not unlike watching a show by Phoebe Waller-Bridge (whom she also dressed up as for Halloween one year), and her day job is just as paradoxically playful and profound: as a communications specialist at a public health institution, Aleyna discusses creating factual science-based content in a world plagued by misinformation:
What is your official title?
My official title is… Oh, my God. What is my official title?
[laughs]
Communications and Marketing Specialist.
How would you describe what you do?
Half of my job is enrollment marketing for grad school programs, and the other half is making public health content. The most interesting part of my job is making these public health explainers that go on Instagram and Facebook. Those are fun to write because they feel . . . it feels I’m doing something meaningful.
I did one on the history of gun laws in the US, but from a public health lens. How the laws have evolved, and how we got to where we are. And I did another on how a pandemic becomes an endemic. It’s stuff like that.
Stuff that people will benefit from knowing.
Right. The goal is to raise awareness and make sure people are informed.
How did you get this job?
I had applied for a position in the same office in 2020. I did a bunch of interviews and then got rejected. Then somebody on the team who interviewed me, like a year later was like, “I remember you. Do you want to apply for this open position?” It was very fortunate . . . I was just looking for something communications based that wouldn’t be terrible.
The other option was this one company here that does a bunch of weird religious propaganda and scams old people.
What do you like most about this job?
I just enjoy learning about public health. It’s interesting to me because public health intersects with social justice in a lot of ways that I wasn’t previously aware of.
I also like getting to make memes. Did you watch the show Yellowjackets? I made some memes about COVID and Yellowjackets. That kind of stuff is fun. And I actually learned graphic design for this job, like how to use Illustrator and draw little people.
What are some of its detractions?
Marketing feels a little weird to me sometimes. It’s like, half of my job is getting people to buy something—in this case, a graduate degree. There are worse things I could be selling, though.
Does any of this impact your writing?
I get to write in a different genre, which is a good exercise. I don’t know if it really impacts my writing life. I haven’t felt compelled to write a story about public health or anything like that.
I do think that teaching has helped me to get back into the spirit of writing. I’m teaching a weekly creative writing class on Tuesday evenings, and I have a good, talkative class, which is always nice. And I do portrait and wedding photography in my spare time, which allows me to be creative.
What creative projects are you working on right now?
Right now I’m working on a short story. I was going to say it deals with similar themes as “The Land of Uz,” but it actually doesn’t. It just has elements of religion in it, and it’s a little bit absurd and goofy. Hopefully I finish it. Now that I’ve said it, and it’s gonna be out there in the world, I will.
Aleyna Rentz is a recent graduate of the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and the senior fiction reader for Salamander. Her honors include a 2023 Pushcart Prize, first place in Pleiades‘ 2019 R. M. Kinder Realistic Fiction Contest, third place in the 2018 January/February Glimmer Train New Writers Contest, and being named a finalist for the 2021 St. Lawrence Book Award. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications including the Iowa Review, The Cincinnati Review, Glimmer Train, Pleiades, Rattle, and elsewhere.
