Meet Eliza Benbow, a senior majoring in journalism with a minor in creative nonfiction writing. She spent three weeks of her summer at Brown University, using a SURF grant to delve into the archives of Alan Brilliant and his iconic Unicorn Press. Established in Santa Barbara in 1966, Unicorn Press was known for handmade, often politically charged works of poetry and prose.
Benbow first met Brilliant in 2018 when she started working at his academic bookshop in Greensboro, NC. She remembers that time fondly, saying, “I was his only employee at the time, and more days than not, my shifts were filled with stories of his college years in New York City in the 1950s and the poetry press.”
Between the work and storytelling, Benbow and Brilliant became close friends. He lived unlike anyone she had met before, “he slept on a futon in his bookshop, wore hand-me-down clothes from friends, and gave away money as quickly as he earned it. He was sustained by creative work and constantly learning, from books and from his community, and organized his life around his principles and virtues.”
Brilliant passed in 2022 at the age of 86, and Benbow set out to develop a project on him some time later, once she realized how much material existed in his archives at Brown. Benbow’s senior honors thesis is now a series of narrative essays weaving her memories of Brilliant with archival findings and interviews with his friends and colleagues. This research has allowed her to capture Brilliant’s eccentric life and impact on the literary community.
Reflecting on her research journey, Benbow shares that she was most struck by the archives’ depth, as she uncovered internal communications and correspondence between Brilliant and the press’s collaborators from the 1960s and 1970s. “I was fascinated by how much material existed on Unicorn Press’s daily operations, which gave me a real sense of their day-to-day life.”
Benbow credits her classes in UNC’s DOECL with sparking her interest in archival research and teaching her to integrate research into her creative work. “I would not have become interested in archival research if it were not for the ECL department,” she says, noting that her creative nonfiction course with Prof. Julia Ridley Smith encouraged her to explore her unique voice through research. Other favorite classes, such as magazine writing with Prof. Melissa Faliveno, helped her bridge journalistic and creative writing.
Benbow’s experiences in ECL have been instrumental in shaping her path: “DOECL has really given me the tools and inspiration to pursue these goals,” she says, grateful for the department’s encouragement to pursue her passion for storytelling across genres.
After graduation, Benbow hopes to work in journalism or publishing, with plans to continue developing her thesis on Brilliant into a full biography.
Congratulations Eliza!
