Alumni Profile: Jaed Coffin ’07
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Finding the Words
Some travel far from home to find their place in the world. Others go deep within themselves. Jaed Coffin ’07 did both, when, at age 21, he left home in Brunswick for his mother’s ancestral village in Thailand to be ordained as a Buddhist monk.
He tells the story of that journey in a new book, A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants (Da Capo Press, 2008). Part travelogue, part memoir, the book carries readers along on Coffin’s search for his cultural identity, as the child of a Thai mother and white American father. It’s a journey recounted with introspection and revelation, though sometimes not quite in ways the author had anticipated.
Coffin already had a publisher interested in the book before he enrolled in USM’s Stonecoast master of fine arts writing program in 2005. But the manuscript was not yet completed. His work with Stonecoast faculty, including Leslea Newman and Lewis Robinson, shaped both book and author.
“I had never had anyone look at my writing,” he says. “I wanted to work with people who were a little farther along than I was, and to see how it was done.”
The first lesson was to settle down a bit. In fact, two days before classes began, he flew home to Maine from Juneau, Alaska, where he’d spent time fighting on the roughhouse boxing circuit.
“When he entered the program, Jaed was writing mostly from the point of view of a Jack Kerouac-ish, young man’s adventures,” says Newman. “He learned that there was a lot more to write about. Jaed is obviously talented and was very committed to his writing. He was not afraid of the hard work involved in rewriting. Not all writers are capable of doing that.”
At Stonecoast, Coffin says, faculty introduced him to a “very disciplined, nuts-and-bolts approach to serious writing. There’s a very formulaic professionalism to it.”
The result was the difference between the ability to write a story and storytelling.
“In the revision process, he thought about how he was personally connected to the writing, and how a reader would connect with it,” says Robinson, who worked closely with Coffin and remains a friend. “He had to get at the heart of not what just sounded good, but what was really true. With a lot of time and some guidance, his work in the program allowed him to do that.”
“The amount of personal attention you get is pretty amazing,” Coffin says of the program’s low-residency design. “It’s a great experience to have a professional writer look at your work and comment extensively on what needs work, and what you’re doing well. ”
About six months after graduation in 2007, the book was on the shelves, and Coffin was looking ahead to his next project. In the spring of 2008, he was heading back to Juneau on a fellowship to work on a book about the local fight scene.
“Roughhouse boxing is pretty wild,” Coffin says. “Go online and search YouTube for ‘Alaska roughhouse boxing.’ That’ll give you an idea what it’s like.”
Or you could wait a bit. Chances are Coffin’s next book will take you inside the ring itself.
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