Gabrielle Bellot

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Gabrielle Bellot is a staff writer for Literary Hub and the Head Instructor at Catapult. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, The Atlantic, The Cut, Gay Magazine, Tin House, Guernica, The Paris Review Daily, them, and many other places. Her essays have been anthologized in Indelible in the Hippocampus (2019), Can We All Be Feminists? (2018), and elsewhere. She holds both an MFA and PhD in Creative Writing from Florida State University. She lives in Queens.

Stories

Cover Photo: A photograph of a bright purple jellyfish rising from the ocean floor. Behind it is the bright blue of the sea, beneath it pale clouds of churned-up sand.
On Jellyfish and the Fear of Touch

Early in the trip, the jellyfishes begin to take on the quality of metaphor.

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Gabrielle Bellot
Dec 14, 2022
Columns | Things | Wander, Woman
Cover Photo: This header image is a photograph of the writer Najya Williams next to the cover of her book 'Cotton'
Najya Williams Believes Language Is a Place of Struggle and Resistance

In this interview, Catapult’s head instructor, Gabrielle Bellot, talks with instructor Najya Williams about Black resistance, her literary inspirations, and exploring nontraditional forms.

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Gabrielle Bellot
Oct 25, 2022
Don’t Write Alone | Notes From Class
Cover Photo: This header image is a headshot of Javier Sinay next to the cover of his book, 'The Murders of Moisés Ville'
Javier Sinay Believes We Have to Make Our Stories More Complex

In this interview, Catapult’s head instructor, Gabrielle Bellot, talks with instructor Javier Sinay about a Latin American literary genre called “crónica.”

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Gabrielle Bellot
Oct 20, 2022
Don’t Write Alone | Notes From Class
Cover Photo: This header image shows the cover of Chelsea's book, A CALM & NORMAL HEART, along with Chelsea's headshot. Chelsea's hair is braided and she wears dangly earrings while looking into the distance to the left of the photographer.
Chelsea T. Hicks Wants More Indigenous Poets to Write from Their Own Languages

In this interview, Catapult’s head instructor, Gabrielle Bellot, talks with instructor Chelsea T. Hicks about Indigenous poetry, colonialism, languages, the process of “rematriation,” and more.

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Gabrielle Bellot
Mar 07, 2022
Don’t Write Alone | Notes From Class
Cover Photo: This header is a picture of the author Julian K. Jarboe next to the cover of their book, EVERYONE ON THE MOON. In the center, we see a stamp that reads "writers who read," which is being written onto a notebook. The other hand of this writer holds a pair of glasses.
Writers Who Read: A Conversation on Body Horror with Julian K. Jarboe

“If you’re interested in responding to difference and change in a fantastic way, body horror fiction can be a great way to push through the stereotypical or conventional roles of monstrosity.”

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Gabrielle Bellot
Oct 14, 2021
Don’t Write Alone | Notes From Class
Cover Photo: cover comic illustration of Kamala Khan as Ms. Marvel, grinning with one fist extended in the air
Kamala Khan, Ms. Marvel, and Me

I’m still drawn to stories about teenage girls’ lives, real or fantastical, and a part of it is trying to glimpse a world I never fully got to walk in.

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Gabrielle Bellot
Feb 16, 2021
Columns | Wander, Woman
Cover Photo: the cast of the show 'Freaks and Geeks' in front of a row of orange lockers
Rewatching ‘Freaks and Geeks’ in a Polarized America

For all the pain, there is also beauty in the margins those outside of them may never understand.

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Gabrielle Bellot
Jan 19, 2021
Columns | Wander, Woman
Cover Photo: photograph of a scuba-diver ascending in a blue-lit column between two massive black shapes that might be underwater rocks
The Year of Breath

I try to feel my lungs expanding and contracting, just to make sure they still are. There is something soothing, like the indigo of a fading day, in that reminder.

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Gabrielle Bellot
Oct 15, 2020
Columns | Wander, Woman
Cover Photo: A Minneapolis mural and memorial honor George Floyd, killed by police on May 25, 2020. The mural is by artists Xena Goldman, Cadex Herrera, and Greta McLain. Flowers, candles, and signs left by mourners in the foreground.
Living in Dread of the Next Name We’ll Chant

There is hope in the size and power of our protests, hope that our message will truly, finally be heard—but whether it will be understood in the hearts that need it most is a much harder, scarier question.

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Gabrielle Bellot
Jun 03, 2020
Columns | Wander, Woman
Cover Photo: image of a medieval plague doctor walking along a dirt road next to a lake blanketed in mist
Why Do We Read Plague Stories?

They suggest that we can get through adversity, that things could always be worse. And sometimes, the best of these stories are genuinely full of love.

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Gabrielle Bellot
Apr 06, 2020
Columns | Wander, Woman