Seth Abramson

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.[17] According to The Washington Post, Abramson's writing suggests that "after trying for many years to expand his business empire into Russia...Trump visited Moscow in 2013 to personally meet agents of Russian President Vladmir Putin, using his beauty pageant as cover. There...a secret deal was struck: Putin agreed to open up his country's rich real estate market to Trump, and Trump agreed to campaign for president while promoting pro-Russian policies."[18] Avi Selk of the Post writes that Abramson "has become 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."[18]

Writers at The New Republic,[19] The Atlantic,[20] and Deadspin[21] 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.'"[22]

Other media outlets have offered different 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."[23] Virginia Heffernan writes in Politico that Abramson's "theory-testing" is "urgently important."[24] Der Spiegel calls Abramson "a quintessential American figure: an underdog who became an involuntary hero."[25] 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."[26]

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."[27] A Playboy interviewer wrote of Proof of Collusion that "not one error has been found in the book."[15] According to a review in the Herald (Scotland), "[S]uggestive 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."[28] 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.[29] 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.[30] Kirkus Reviews called Proof of Corruption "careful and exhaustive," concluding that it makes a "strong case for Trump's outsized, boundless corruption."[31]

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, intended to summarize key aspects of the "Proof" book trilogy.[32] The podcast reached the top ten Apple Podcasts in the Government category in 31 countries, peaking at #2 in the United States.[33][34]

During the 2016 Democratic primary race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, Abramson supported Sanders.[35] He authored what Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine called "a cult-favorite series of Bernie [Sanders] delegate-math fan fiction."[36] Philip Bump of The Washington Post took issue with Abramson's analyses, calling them "empty theory, unproven...but innovative."[37] Writing in The Chicago Tribune, Stephen Stromberg called Abramson a "Sanders zealot...[in] reality-denial."[38] 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."[39][40] Politico concurred, referring to Abramson's political commentary as "verses from the abstract."[41]

Abramson has published a number of poetry books and anthologies. Publishers Weekly describes Abramson as "serious and ambitious...uncommonly interested in general statements, in hard questions, and harder answers, about how to live."[42] 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."[43] Notre Dame Review echoed the sentiment, calling Abramson "a powerful voice."[44]

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."[45]

In May 2014, Abramson was criticised for his Huffington Post piece "Last Words for Elliot Rodger", a "remix" of words taken from the final YouTube video of the perpetrator of the Isla Vista killings, which Abramson published less than two days after they took place.[46] Both the reuse of Rodger's words and the timing of the poem caused offense.[47] Although Abramson called the work "a vehicle for amity and compassion", Omnidawn, Abramson's publisher at the time, issued a statement saying that it was "dismayed, disheartened, distressed", adding that "his actions in this matter are not in alignment with our principles."[48][49]

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.[50][51] The series was picked up by Wesleyan University Press in 2014.[52] 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).[53] In 2018, The Rumpus called the anthology "meaty, daring, and beautiful."[54] Nicole Rudick, managing editor of The Paris Review, has called the series "just my kind of rabbit hole."[55]

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.[56] 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 of various creative writing programs. Writing for The Cambridge Companion to American Poetry Since 1945, Hank Lazer described Abramson's project as "a daring and data-rich endeavor."[57] 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."[58]

Data from the MRP was regularly published by Poets & Writers between 2008 and 2013. The Chronicle of Higher Education termed the Poets & Writers national assessment methodology "comprehensive" and "the only MFA ranking regime."[59][60] 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.[61] In their response, Poets & Writers asserted that it adhered to the highest journalistic standards.[62] 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."[62]

Nonfiction

• Proof of Collusion: How Trump Betrayed America (Simon & Schuster, 2018)
• Proof of Conspiracy: How Trump's International Collusion Is Threatening American Democracy (St. Martin's Press/Simon & Schuster UK, 2019)
• Proof of Corruption: Bribery, Impeachment, and Pandemic in the Age of Trump (St. Martin's Press, 2020)
• Citizen Journalist (Macmillan, 2022)

Reference

• The Creative Writing MFA Handbook [Contributing Author] (Continuum Publishing, 2008)
• The Poets & Writers Guide to MFA Programs [Contributing Author] (Poets & Writers, 2011)
• An Insider's Guide to Graduate Creative Writing Degrees (Bloomsbury, 2018)

Poetry

• The Suburban Ecstasies (Ghost Road Press, 2009)
• Northerners (New Issues/Western Michigan University Press, 2011)
• Thievery (University of Akron Press, 2013)
• Metamericana (BlazeVOX Books, 2015)
• DATA (BlazeVOX Books, 2016)
• Golden Age (BlazeVOX Books, 2017)

Anthology

• Best American Experimental Writing 2014 [Series Co-Editor] (University of Chicago Press, 2014)
• Best American Experimental Writing 2015 [Series Co-Editor] (Wesleyan University Press, 2015)
• Best American Experimental Writing 2016 [Series Co-Editor] (Wesleyan University Press, 2016)
• Best American Experimental Writing 2018 [Series Co-Editor] (Wesleyan University Press, 2018)
• Best American Experimental Writing 2020 [Series Co-Editor] (Wesleyan University Press, 2020)

• Proof: A Pre-Election Special [Co-Host] (Cineflix, 2020)

Academic

• After the Program Era: The Past, Present, and Future of Creative Writing in the University (University of Iowa Press, 2017)

Prose

• Dear America (Trinity University Press, 2020)

Poetry

• Xconnect (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000)
• Lawyers and Poetry (West Virginia University Press, 2001)
• Best New Poets 2008 (University of Virginia Press, 2008)
• Poetry of the Law (University of Iowa Press, 2010)
• The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry (Bloomsbury, 2013)

• Los Angeles Review of Books (April 19, 2019)
• Real Time with Bill Maher (April 13, 2019)
• Playboy (March 25, 2019)
• Gothamist (December 12, 2018)
• Chronicle of Higher Education (May 15, 2017)