Lake Forest College Visiting Assistant Professor of English Zachary Martin has no problem boasting about his fetish–a book fetish, that is. He first discovered his passion for the written word while working in the special collections section of the library. The rest is history.
Martin grew up in Miami, Florida under two parents who taught theater at their local college. In high school, he attended a magnet school that focused on visual arts. From Miami, Martin chose to attend the University of Chicago for his undergraduate degree, where he was faced with a difficult choice in terms of what he wanted to study: physics or English.
Although Martin didn’t have the opportunity to take the traditional creative writing major at University of Chicago, since the school didn’t have a formal program at the time, he was destined to figure out a way to beat the system.
“I weaseled my way into every adjunct’s writing class who came to UChicago and really pushed to craft my own creative writing major,” Martin said.
Upon graduation, he was accepted to graduate school for writing at Florida State University, where he taught undergrad classes to pay for school. In a writing program that included about 90 other “word-crazy” book fetishists, Martin described his experience as eye opening.
“It was the first time I was surrounded by so many writers, people who loved writing just as much as I did and wanted to do it as a profession,” he said.
From FSU, Martin moved to the valleys of Pennsylvania, where he became a self-described “mountain man” as he worked on his thesis. Not too long after that, Martin got a call from a friend in Cambridge, Massachusetts who asked him if he wanted to escape solitude and move to Boston.
In Boston, Zach met his wife at a production of West Side Story and moved to New York with her before applying to University of Houston to pursue his PhD in English. In Houston, Martin took on the role of editor-In-chief at Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts.
Associate Professor of English Carla Arnell spoke about how Martin’s varied resume made him an excellent candidate to come to Lake Forest College. “He had a really nice blend of publishing background experience, creative writing, and literature,” she said. “Students who have talked to him couldn’t believe how well-versed he is in the world of literature and how ready he is to engage in discussion on numerous novels.”
Martin’s former creative writing student Jordan Jacobs ’20 admired how much Martin involves people who already have an idea of what they want to write about and works to help them take their idea a step forward.
Maggie Lynch ’18, who is currently in Martin’s Advanced Publishing class, said he is a fountain of information. “As someone who experienced real-world publishing, Professor Martin can give honest answers in regards to a career in publishing, along with the difficulties it presents,” Lynch said.
Although his favorite work is whatever he is working on now, Martin strongly admires the layout and design of his reportage non-fiction piece on war refugees from the Congo who came to Houston to learn and become financially viable as farmers.
His advice for students at Lake Forest College is to take advantage of the liberal arts education and take courses outside their home department because it provides students the opportunity to be well-rounded thinkers and adaptable, which is something Martin believes we need more of in this world.
