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Sharks and Jets, Montagues and Capulets, Targeryans and Starks - great literary rivalries all. In each story, romantics dare to cross those lines for love. So what’s the modern day, Nebraska equivalent? While it doesn’t usually result in swordplay (let’s keep it that way!), passions run hot between fans of the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers and the Creighton University Bluejays. Especially in the late fall as the two schools get set to square off on the basketball court. So who is the couple crossing the Bluejay-Husker lines? Dr. Jonis Agee and Dr. Brent Spencer, Professors at Nebraska and Creighton, respectively, working in the same field - creative writing. The couple married in 2001, after a decade or so of flirtation. The slow burn The pair first became aware of one another in the 90s, running in the same Midwest writing circles. While they enjoyed each other’s company, romance did not spark right away. When Spencer first started teaching at Creighton in 1992, he tasked himself with meeting as many writers from the region as he could. “I met Richard Duggin, Art Homer, and others at UNO. We got in the habit of hanging out together. Every once in a while, they'd mention this writer, Jonis,” Spencer said. " ‘Oh, you'd love her,’ they said. ‘She's so smart and funny and good-looking’.” The Omaha group created a joint reading series bringing in authors from around the Midwest and around the country. Agee, working at the College of Saint Catherine in St. Paul, Minnesota at the time, was among them. “She came down for her reading at the UNO campus. She came in her boots and a cowboy hat. This woman is a combination of Susan Sarandon, Bonnie Raitt, and Calamity Jane,” Spencer said. Agee was immediately impressed with Spencer as well. “Man, I have a crush on this guy!” Agee said. “I did. We kept seeing each other at AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) events. I thought he was so mysterious.” Spencer largely kept to himself during the conventions, but it wasn’t so much being mysterious or aloof. “Fear of crowds,” he laughed. Agee, a graduate of Omaha Central High School, would come through Omaha on book tours or to visit relatives and would make a point to connect with Spencer. “I would just say I'm going to be in town, we would meet and have supper or something,” Agee said. “There was all this charge and energy, but nothing ever happened. We were just always connected. And then nine years later, nine!” What happened nine years later was a job offer from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. That put the relationship on a more geographically compatible plane. Spencer had spent some time in the Twin Cities as a Writer in Residence at five area schools including Saint Catherine’s. “That’s when we finally made a good connection,” Agee said. Spencer helped Agee house hunt in the Lincoln area after she accepted the UNL job. “I was always including Brent in my plans. We were driving around with the realtor. We would go to a house and I'd say ‘Now here's my study and here could be yours.’ It was really nice because he would give his opinion and we would try to imagine living there. So, it just seemed to unfold so naturally.” The couple was married in 2001. The band of the late blues legend Magic Slim, a Lincoln resident at the time, played at the wedding. Working together As you might expect, the pair collaborate on projects in a number of ways including offering feedback on solo projects. While criticism of one's literary work can often sting, the couple manages to avoid hurt feelings -- most of the time. “He did make me cry early on. He yelled at me ‘you're a better writer!’ Agee said. “But he’s never made me cry since then.” They’ve influenced the way one another approaches the writing process as well. Spencer is the more meticulous of the two, while Agee has a more free-flowing approach, getting her thoughts down and going back to rewrite and edit later. That’s changed over time though. “She has a different way of working than I do, she’s more freewheeling. I have lately come to embrace it thinking that's the better way. My approach had been more meticulous, trying to make sure everything is spelled correctly and punctuated correctly -- trying to do too much at once.” The pair have collaborated on a number of projects including a screenplay for an unreleased film about auto racing for b-movie legend Roger Corman. “We got a phone call. I picked it up that night and a woman said Roger Corman's office is calling for Jonis Agee,” Spencer said. “I’d met Roger Corman years before and I’m just a huge movie fan. I just held the phone out and said, ‘whatever this man asks you to do, just do it’.” Corman’s interest was likely spurred by Agee’s book Taking the Wall, a collection of short stories about motor sports. The movie, tentatively titled Full Throttle, featured Christopher Lloyd of Back to the Future and Taxi fame. Corman, a motorsports fan, had read the book and hired Agee to pen a script. Agee had no experience writing a screenplay, so the couple collaborated on the project. Of course, Spencer had never written a screenplay either. “I’d never even seen a screenplay,” Agee said. “But we were like ‘oh, sure we can write a screenplay. No problem’.” The movie was shot in Louisiana, but ultimately not released. Corman was unhappy with the racing sequences, Spencer said. “They had used the wrong cars and all kinds of things,” Spencer said. “At one point, (Corman) was going down to reshoot the racing scenes himself, but I don’t think it ever happened.” However, Corman did send a print of the film to his writers. Solo projects Of course, more than a few projects written by the pair have been published. Among Agee’s works are novels The Bones of Paradise, The River Wife, Strange Angels and Sweet Eyes, among others. Strange Angels and Sweet Eyes both earned Notable Book of the Year recognition from the New York Times. “Everying thing she does is so original and fully imagined. She has such a wonderful sense of landscape. It makes me think I'm an amateur,” Spencer said. “She gives her characters a great sense of humor.” Spencer’s credits include novels Rattlesnake Daddy, Are We Not Men?, The Lost Son, and All Done with Dying. His short story The True History was included in The Best American Mystery Stories, 2007, edited by renowned author and journalist Carl Hiaasen. Spencer’s work has appeared in GQ, The Atlantic, and McSweeney’s. He also recently published A Handbook for the Online Student to help guide students new to the online experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. Character development and dialogue are some of the things that make Spencer’s work stand out, Agee said. “Brent is great, and I mean, truly great at getting into the dark psychology of his characters,” she said. “He has a cinematic imagination. He's always teaching me about dialogue. My characters want to talk like Faulkner. His characters are much cleaner and succinct.” Both share William Faulkner as a primary influence. Spencer’s favorites include giants such as Ernest Hemingway and Charles Dickens. A trained actor, Spencer is also a Shakespeare fan. “I've read and reread a lot of Shakespeare and studied Shakespeare in classes. I've acted in Shakespeare plays since I was 15,” Spencer said. “There's so much hidden craft in there, so much writing that was meant to help the actors. It’s an amazing blueprint for an actor.” Agee admires southern writers like Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Ron Rash, and Alice Hoffman. “If I could figure out how to write like Alice Hoffman, I would be so happy,” Agee said. “Her characters can do some fairly dark and crazy stuff, but there's always this sense of life that is maintained. There is a way to survive this life and come out on the other side of it or not be destroyed by your disappointments and mistakes. I like writers like that.” Hawkeye history The pair share another influence - the University of Iowa and its stellar creative writing reputation. Although not on campus at the same time, Agee earned her bachelor’s degree in Iowa City. Spencer attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, famous for producing writers such as John Irving (The World According to Garp), WP Kinsella (Shoeless Joe), and Marilynne Robinson (Gilead). Both Agee and Spencer praised the creative culture at Iowa for instilling the confidence necessary to pursue a career as a writer. “I had always written on the side, in the stolen moments of the day -- not telling people because I was afraid. I did tell my parents and they literally said, ‘You're not going to do that. We have a job lined up for you in a sewing factory.’ I had nothing against real work. I’ve always had hard jobs, but I thought ‘I want to do this and why can't I do this’,” Spencer said. “ Iowa was the place where I thought, ‘this is the place where you get to do this, where this is the most important thing.’ I'd never been given permission like that. That was the main thing for me -- to be allowed to do the thing you loved and to live the dream you're dreaming.” In the classroom and Brighthorse Books They try to offer that same permission to be creative in their classrooms today. “I think it's making a space for students' imaginations and making it possible for them to have those dreams and giving them those skills,” Agee said. While Agee favors realism in her own writing, many of her current students, influenced by things like Harry Potter and Game of Thrones, are working in fantasy and science fiction. “We've got dragon writers!” Agee said. “I was like, ‘okay, what do these dragons eat?’ There has to be realistic details under the fantasy. They still have to write well. I want them to be able to create characters that we can empathize with. If they’re going to get into this, I want them to do it as well as they can.” The couple extended that creative space beyond the classroom when they launched Brighthorse Books. The company serves as an avenue to publication for authors of poetry, short stories, and novels. Each year they ask for submissions in those three categories offering a $1,000 prize and publication to the submissions judged as best. “We're both teaching young writers and know how hard it was to get published,” Agee said. “We came up with this model and we thought, ‘we can do this.’ We've just been so impressed with the submissions over the years.” For submission information visit: Brighthorse Books Submission Manager On-court rivalries and in-class success So will there be any divisiveness when the Huskers and Bluejays men’s and women’s basketball teams square off on the court in the coming days? Not really to tell the truth. While Agee keeps track of the basketball teams as well as the Husker volleyball squad, Spencer is only vaguely aware of Creighton’s on-court product. “She follows a lot. I am a bit out of it,” Spencer said. “I was in the Student Center a few years ago trying to get a cup of coffee. All these students in front of me were huddling around this tall guy. It turned out it was (former Creighton star and now seven-year NBA veteran) Doug McDermott. They had to tell me who that was.” “I knew more about him,” Agee said. “I said, ‘He's going to go pro. He's good’.” The couple is more aware of the athletic department and student-athletes off the court and in the classroom. Each has been impressed with the diligence shown in ensuring that players are getting to class and doing the work. “Every student-athlete, male or female, regardless of the sport, I get a checkup every month from the athletic department,” Agee said. “They ask about their attendance, their behavior, their assignments as a whole. They are good students.” “One of the reasons I like teaching at Creighton is that notion of care for the individual that they have and the Jesuit ideal,” Spencer said. “I get those same notices for every student. ‘How is she doing? Is he having a hard time?’ There's a lot of discussion like that. That, to me, is the way it should be.”
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