I look around the cafe trying to find someone with a laptop and notebook. I figured Luke Dittrich would have these things because authors usually have writing materials. After a few minutes of looking around, the man next to me asked if I was Makayla. I was right, he had a notebook and pen right in front of him. 

Dittrich is a nonfiction science author who writes books and articles. He grew up in Cambridge and has traveled to Chicago, New York City and Mexico City. An example is his most recent work, “Patient H.M,” which explored the history of lobotomies and gave him a new view of a family member who was involved. 

To him, writing nonfiction has an added benefit like journalism: once-in-a-lifetime experiences. It’s like a backstage game pass. It’s an adventurous thing to say — not many would be willing to admit that they get enjoyment from these experiences during a job and take advantage of making connections with people completely different from them. 

 He started writing nonfiction after realizing he can use the same strategies as fiction authors use, like cliffhangers at the end of chapters to keep the story interesting. 

Dittrich has a heart, a warm side to him, too. He found himself near Joplin, Missouri after a tornado devastated the town and affected about 100 people. Three terrified people were in a convenience store trying to survive the tornado and were able to weather the storm by hiding in a cooler. One of the survivors recorded the experience and posted it online and it went viral. Luke put his original story aside — writing about a musician who was a big influence on American music — and decided to write about the tornado survivors instead. 

As an aspiring author interviewing a successful author, I asked for advice because every writer offers different advice but you never know what will actually work until you try them yourself. My professor told me that an audience motivates you to write more because since you know someone wants to read your work, it gets you excited. Dittrich disagreed. He says that an audience could work but when it’s a job, he says, “The danger is that you are losing a bit of this...sacred purity or whatever, something of the like, the childlike innocence of doing something just for that element you really like.” 

He also said that before you get an editor you have to be able to take criticism and be able to throw something away when you have to. I agree with that because eventually multiple people will view your work and you have to take that advice to be able to improve and get better at your own work.

I’m inspecting a photo of the Fog x FLO project featured at the Newton Free Library. It’s of a performer half enshrouded in a mysterious mist, beckoning inward. A few rays of sunlight shimmer through the mist behind her, adding to the dreamy quality of the picture. Within the exhibition, a few other viewers look at photographs of performers in this artificial fog. I take in the one I stand before and consider how the picture makes me feel, what it reminds me of. But then, something makes a tentative step forward into my bubble of  focus. I hear its voice before I can turn slightly to see who’s there.

“Hi,” says the intruder, “Are you… are you Jack?” It’s Jen Mergel, one of Boston’s leading curators of contemporary art. She conducts herself amicably, yet in the earnest, slightly rushed way of a busy woman with many connections. Her importance is cemented as soon as she introduces herself to the artist of the collection we stand in.

Led by her purposeful stride, I follow her through the library, into another local art display, which she takes hardly a moment to analyze. She turns to me, and delivers her thoughts promptly. We step into a large, silent hall of the library, find a table, and take a plunge into the world of art work, exhibitions, and connoisseurships.

“I would say, I certainly have an interest in making,” said Mergel, who initially thought she wanted to study cognitive neurobiology in college. She was interested in exploring how we make connections and associations between things. Despite how far such a science feels from art, the link is clear. After all, what is the work of a curator if not to use the presentation of the art to spark the intended connections, to provoke thoughts and questions?

After getting into a studio art course, Mergel discovered a newfound love for art. “You know, I could stay up till three or four in the morning and not even notice time passing, because it’s very satisfying, trying to solve these problems,” said said. From there, she attended Harvard University and studied visual and environmental studies. She followed an educational path in art, teaching at universities and museums, until becoming a curator.

For many, the occupation of curator isn’t well defined or understood. Many know it as a career with a vague relationship to art and showcases, but what exactly do curators do? Officially, they select, organize and present artwork. They interpret works, and then use the space, lighting, proximities to the other pieces and the viewer, atmosphere and other important design elements to provoke the right questions and to convey the intended — and unintended — ideas. The curatorial process is quite variable. One of the major factors is the specialty, and what kind of art you may be curating. For contemporary art, the future is the main focus.

“Regardless of discipline, any curator needs to ask some fundamental questions, and they need to be able to anticipate what’s amazing to experience with your senses. What’s going to build curiosity in terms of how does this happen? Why is it this way? Who knew that the thing that I assumed is actually counterintuitive? So an exhibition may raise questions and not necessarily provide answers,” she explains.

Mergel’s personal style involves searching for a piece which is humble and of service to its community. It opens up new perspectives and windows of thought in the viewer, as opposed to being egocentric. She says many art pieces, especially ones of colonial and imperialist times, were made with clear presumptions of superiority, and created to glorify themselves and their creator. But Mergel is more worried about a piece of artwork which was created for the people and changes its audience in a thoughtful way. “I choose projects that are satisfying, and I feel like I’m learning something along the way. I feel like I’m helping other people learn something or rethink something, as opposed to, for example, doing another Picasso show.”

Unfortunately, many of these egocentric mindsets linger as a part of their artwork’s legacy. She explained her decision to leave the MFA as a curator, observing that many of the famous art institutions were founded in the 18th century from a patriarchal, single-minded perspective in which the museum seeks to tell you what the best is, and art was largely presented by and for white men. Despite the revolutionary social and political changes that have occurred since these institutions’ founding, their art is still of course primarily historical, and so their attitudes, at times, have stagnated in the past.

Given the many ways curators can approach their work and the variability of the work itself, there are a plethora of ways curators measure their success. Some feel accomplished when they have mentored a great number of aspiring curators into their own school of thought, and helped them achieve success themselves. Others take pride in rising from curator to director of an important institution. Some find achievement in having influenced the most institutions and policies in the world of art. Mergel, however, values the impact she leaves on her audience and on the field.

She, like other curators who have drifted away from institutional affiliations, is interested in shaping how audiences connect to art, whether in a public space or elsewhere, even helping viewers understand the role of the curator. While many think of beauty and talent when they think of good art, Mergel begs to differ. Good art carries weight, has meaning, and makes you think, and should be appreciated for such.

“People will often say the sign of intelligence is to hold two conflicting ideas that are paradoxically simultaneous... and art can do that in a way that other media can’t.”

Sitting by the window, Elizabeth Killorin explains that her life motto is “cura personalis,” the Latin expression which means “care of the whole person.”

When it comes to Killorin, a campus minister, playwright and mother, it is obvious from merely an hour conversation with her that this phrase is the driving force of her life.

“I really did try, when I was teaching, to make relationships with the students and to form sort of a community in that class every day.”

When prompted to reflect on her past 12 years of being an English teacher at Boston College High, Killorin fondly recalls the effort she put into encouraging her pupils to open up and experience worlds of literature they had never imagined. “When you’re talking about stories and characters’ lives, you can address issues that aren’t going to play out in their minds.”

Despite the stimulating conversations that take place during book discussions, Killorin felt she would be a better fit as campus minister — someone who provides guidance about a student’s faith — because teaching in the classroom disrupted her ability to build positive relationships with the students.

“It would break my heart when I had a student who is going through a rough time and I would have to turn them away because I really needed to finish making this test for next period,” she said.

Now, to Killorin’s delight, she makes time with the student body without having polishing lesson plans at the top of her list. Her new set of responsibilities allows her to focus on other things like,“[C]ommunity building, on being the emotional support for students and being a trusted adult that they can come to and talk with, or even just joke with,” Killorin said.

Committed to assisting the student body at every turn, Killorin also lends her expertise to BC High seniors as they write their college essays. And no, this is not one of her job requirements.

“Campus ministers aren’t also college essay resource people,” Killorin explains with a small chuckle, “I just love doing it.”

With English teachers often having 50 other students to attend to, Killorin puts it upon herself to be a reliable and personable mentor for college essays. She describes the process as“soul-sucking.”

“It’s a little heartbreaking to see them really see themselves as a product that they have to sell,” she laments.

Her best advice for navigating this tedious process? “Tell me a story. And it might even be something that you didn’t even think was a big deal. But when you tell it to me, I can see all these qualities of you in it.”

Though constructing the college essay is pressure inducing, it’s always worth it in the end when they prevail. “I love when the kid finally gets it,” she said, smiling, like she was replaying the memories in her head, “And you can see like, they’re so proud of it. That’s really addicting. How do you say no to that?”

Despite juggling a promotion as campus minister, and three kids, Killorin has found the patience and determination to write and direct an original one-act play called “Candles By The Sea,” which follows an old married couple as they grieve their son, a New York firefighter who perished during 9/11.

On the night of Killorin’s play, my mother and I arrived at BC High, lowering into the cushioned seats of the BC High auditorium. I flipped through the folded Playbill, apprehensive and excited at the same time. After some chatter, the lights began to dim and we were welcomed to the production.

When a character, Tom, asks the waiter if he’s going to light the candles, he responds, “No, they’ll just blow out anyway.”This on-stage conversation is a microcosm of the age old discussion on the shortness of life, how in moments of grief one can feel apprehensive to seek out light, because it may get torn away once more. Thankfully the ending of the play is one that radiates hope and light.

“I come out for that final scene, where there’s there’s still hope in the darkness. There’s light there,” Killorin recounts.

Her motivation for sharing the story largely stems from her admiration for Father Mychal Judge, chaplain to the New York Fire Department and the first fatality from 9/11. His work resonated so much with her that she included him as a character. “I wanted it to sound like him. So a lot of his lines are actually his words.”

Killorin’s devotion to helping her students is tremendously admirable, as well as her insatiable desire to spew creativity whenever possible. Knowing that a mother of three small children not only acts as a campus minister and college essay advisor, but also writes and directs a 40 minute one-act play for fun, is enough to encourage any current procrastinator to get up and say “if she can do it, so can I.”