Alumni Spotlight: Patrick Mainelli
After earning both a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in English, this 2014 alum has gone on to create photography, missives, music, and more—for Patrick Mainelli, it’s just the beginning.
Post-graduation, Mainelli recalls “floating around for a bit, picking up a paycheck from wherever I could.” While many might find this uncertainty distressing, he welcomed it, knowing that a job wasn’t his ultimate goal. “I knew the pleasure of sinking deeply into writing projects and thinking long and hard about literature,” he explains. “I just knew that I wanted to do work that offered some of this same satisfaction.” He adds, “I also had the sense that this satisfaction was not something I needed a job to give me.”
This perspective put his ambitions in the driver’s seat, steering him toward roles in communications at the Union for Contemporary Art nonprofit, state contract work supporting disability services, and creative projects in graphic design. Today, he applies his communication skills at Omaha’s science museum, Kiewit Luminarium, which he deems “a fun challenge moving from the realm of writing for artists to writing for science programming.”
Mainelli credits his time with the UNO English Department for honing his creative writing and thinking skills—qualities that often set him apart in the workplace. His work, which explores themes of wilderness and change in American landscapes and culture, has been featured in journals, radio programs, and twice in Robert Atwan’s Best American Essays series. As his creativity grows, so does he, proving that it’s possible “to make creative labor part of my livelihood.”
