Hi there,
I will no longer be publishing any writer interviews since I want to concentrate on my own projects. Please look at the archives for all my interviews. I might return sometime, but right now I'm happy letting this chapter of my life close. Thank you! -Aura 1. When did you start writing? "I started writing when I immigrated to the USA, about 18 years ago. I had always been a reader, and moving here provided solitude and time to write because I came on a dependent visa, unable to apply for a job. My son was two years old at the time, so I created a mommy blog where I posted his tantrums, his antics, the innocent questions he asked. Then, I started writing about my immigrant experience, the differences in the culture I observed, and the persistent longing to be home. Fiction came much later when my son grew older and my life settled down into a steady routine." 2. What drew you to write short stories? "I would say the availability of time. After I obtained a work visa and a full-time job, I could write only in snippets of time after taking care of work and family duties. I started writing shorts because once you get a knack for it, they can be written and revised quickly, and yet give the satisfaction of a completed piece. From the readers’ perspective, a short piece doesn’t demand the time commitment of a novel and still leaves them with an emotion, a realization, or a beginning of something to think about." 3. Where does your inspiration come from? "From everyday moments, the ordinariness of routine. In my opinion, it’s the small seemingly insignificant decisions people make over the course of a day that differentiates one individual from the other. I often find my stories and characters in quiet, in-between moments. When waiting for the Keurig to drip coffee into my mug, I think of how I take my coffee black and how my husband needs a cup of sweet tea at the start of his day. And, before I know I have the outlines of two distinct characters that I can fill with their choice of beverage, the time they take to shower, the salad dressing they prefer, etc. The list of possibilities is endless." 4. How did Skin Over Milk come about? When did you realize you had material for a book? "Skin Over Milk started as a single story set in the backdrop of rain, the relentless monsoon in India that keeps dripping, pouring, and seeping into dwellings and lives. It was a 300-word story of three sisters living in a house flooded by rain. I submitted it to contests and it was shortlisted in a couple of places. After that, I held on to it, did not try to publish it in literary journals. Then I wrote another story about the three girls providing shelter to a dog soaked in the rain. When I thought about these two stories, I realized I had the beginning and possibly the end of something bigger. With that epiphany, I wrote more stories around rain and the three sisters, added more chapters, and molded the girls’ characters into a logical narrative arc. When I was 10,000 words in, I knew I couldn’t scrap the story. It was meant to be a book." 5. What do you hope people take away from your work? "I write mostly about girls and women, burdened by unreasonable expectations of relationships, and society, in general. It’s sad that while life on Mars seems like a possibility, gender parity is still a distant and hazy target. Through my writing, I want to give voice to women who are not seen and heard often, women who are not empowered enough to shun their disgruntled lives, women who persevere and do the course of their duties while nurturing within them a quiet, resilient kind of feminism that emerges in a subtle, natural way at the right moment to make the right decisions, trying to make lives right for their daughters or sisters." 6. What’s your favorite writing advice you’ve been told? "Not sure if someone has told me this but I’ve learned it through my experience: Don’t give up on your work because someone chooses to dislike or dismiss it." 7. Would you like to share what current writing project(s) you are working on? "I have been working on a novel but haven’t gained the right momentum and motivation. Hope to complete a draft but haven’t set a timeline in my mind yet. Besides that, I continue to write short fiction, whenever the clichéd bulb lights up my brain." 8. And finally, what do you enjoy doing that you don’t talk about enough. Tell me all about it! "I love traveling and exploring new places. My family takes a lot of road trips. We’ve driven from Ohio to New Mexico, and to Maine. Besides the external sights and landscapes, road trips are also important to the internal machinery of a family. After a while, when phones die and the music becomes stale, we talk about things that we forget or don't care to mention in the normal course of our lives. The confined space of the car helps us know each other better and the bonus is that the new understanding comes in a natural way, without making a conscious, concerted effort." Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar is an Indian American writer. She is the author of Morsels of Purple and Skin Over Milk. Born to a middle-class family in India, she later migrated to the USA with her husband and son. She currently lives in the suburbs of Ohio. A technologist by profession and a writer by passion, she won first place in ELJ Micro Creative Non-Fiction Prize, placed in the Strands International Flash Fiction Festival. and is the runner-up for the Chestnut Review
Chapbook Contest. Her stories have been shortlisted in the Bath Flash Fiction Awards and SmokeLong Micro Competition. She is currently a Prose Editor at Janus Literary and a Submissions Editor at SmokeLong Quarterly. More at https://saraspunyfingers.com. Reach her @PunyFingers 1. I remember our interview from last year when you talked about one of your writing projects, and that writing project is your debut chapbook coming very soon from fifth wheel press. Huge congrats! How did how to construct a breakup poem come about? When did you realize you had material for a book? "First of all, thank you!! I’m super excited and still kind of baffled that I get to release a chapbook at all. Although I only started really thinking about and putting this together in the spring of 2021, I’d say BREAKUP POEM is a culmination of a lot of themes I’ve been exploring since I started publishing poetry in 2020. I knew I had recurring themes in my work from the beginning, but I didn’t start thinking about making a chapbook out of those themes until March of 2021. I had, at that point, just written the title poem and something about it made my past work click for me. It was that sense of angst, of toxicity, but also of intention. Gently poking fun at myself for all the heartbreak poetry, how I’d become an expert at writing it, how I sometimes made myself sit in the pain to write. I liked the sadness and the narration of it, the way some of my work could jump outside the frame and point out the performance of it. I did Escapril last year, which was a 30-day prompt challenge that I somehow managed to complete, and many of the poems in my chap are from that burst of poetic output in April 2021. After that, I quickly started putting work together, paring down, and reordering it (many, many times) to create the final manuscript." 2. Do you feel like you need to suffer in order to make great art? What are your thoughts on pain and writing, especially as it relates to your forthcoming collection? "Scary question. I said something quippy about this on Twitter already (along the lines of 'I really hope not!') but this is something I’ve been thinking about for a very long time on my own too. I write a lot of sad stuff. Breakup poetry, if you will. And I’m not still sad about my breakups, but sometimes I do worry that I’m mining old pain for poetry in a way that’s almost lazy. I don’t think you need to suffer to make great art. I’ve read tender, joyful, uplifting poetry that I love as much as my favourite angry, frustrated, melancholy poems. I do think sometimes it’s easier to see suffering as poetic. I think of Richard Siken’s words, 'maybe a mouth sounds idiotic when it blathers on about joy', and I’ve honestly thought the same thing about my work. When I am happy, enjoying a packed social calendar, in the honeymoon stage of a new relationship – I don’t write nearly as much. It’s harder for me to write a loving poem, a hopeful poem about the future, than it is for me to write something melancholy or sad or angry. It feels embarrassing, and that’s saying something because in many ways the emotional vulnerability of poetry is in itself embarrassing already. One poem I drafted a while ago while in a relationship ended on a cutesy note that I found cringe even while writing it. After we broke up, I revised that poem to end on a more melancholy note and found it truer to the emotional core of the piece. I don’t want that anecdote to mean that my poetry is better when it’s less happy. But I do think it means I’ve found it easy to settle into a pattern of melancholy, uncertainty, and sadness in my work. I’m working on it. I write occasional funny poems, pop culture poems, irreverent poems – think 'grand prix' or 'love poem for my dying phone battery' or 'what’s in a mouth' – but I just default to a certain tone and so I am better at it, because I practice it. This is all a very longwinded way of saying I don’t feel like the general writing population needs to suffer to make art, but sometimes I worry that I do. As a self-proclaimed creator of breakup poems, what do you do when you run out of breakups? If I end up in a stable, loving, long-term relationship, what then? Maybe I’ll write a different collection, one with a happier throughline. Maybe I’ll write poems about something else entirely. Rocks. Skyscrapers. Peach milk tea in the morning. We’ll have to see if this chapbook gets it out of my system." 3. Tell me a story behind one of your favourite poems in this collection. Where were you when you wrote it? What you were thinking? Why is this one of your favourite poems? "You can’t ask a parent to pick a favourite!! So I’ll just pick one of the many poems that I like in this collection. The final poem in the collection is called 'pink moon', and I wrote it on April 26 2021. I can remember this because a pink moon is a full moon in April, and last year it was a 'super pink moon', meaning it was a very large full moon in the night sky. I had just learned some bad news – not news for me, but for an old friend. And I was in a melancholy sort of mood, sitting at my desk in my childhood bedroom and looking out the window while trying to figure out what my response to the prompt should be. My windows face south and I occasionally have this problem in the night where I forget to close my blinds and the moonlight, if it’s a particularly bright full moon, will wake me in the middle of the night. So I’m trying to think poetic thoughts and I see a full moon. What more can I say? More seriously, I love this piece because it’s hopeful. Because despite all the sadness it grows out of, it heads towards peace. It’s more mature, more reflective. It acknowledges the unfairness of wallowing in your own victimhood and pinning mistakes on one person. It’s a good ending to the collection, a slow culmination of moving away from this rollercoaster of a relationship and towards something happier. I like the idea of a collection of breakup poems ending on this line: 'tomorrow morning i will roll over to meet the moon, not your face, and wave goodbye as i pull on my jeans.' I like the idea of waving goodbye." 4. What’s your favourite writing advice you’ve been told, or what writing advice would you offer? "Honestly, I don’t feel qualified to offer much advice. I think beyond the very general, everyone’s writing practice is specific to themselves. I’ve heard all kinds of wacky things that people do that are helpful for them. I listen to music while I write, and I know some people think that’s crazy. I also can’t remember most of the writing advice I’ve gotten! If it was useful I’ve since internalized it and if it wasn’t then I’ve probably forgotten about it. I’d say the best advice I can give is firstly, to respect yourself and your writing. If you want to write, if you like to write, commit to it. Make the time for it. Don’t dismiss it as something unimportant or extraneous. Whether time to write is jotting down scraps on the subway as you think of lines or blocking time in the evening, treat it as something that’s valuable to you, because it is. Finally, dismiss advice that doesn’t work for you. What is life-changing for someone else’s poetry might be meh for you. It’s not necessarily reflective of you, your validity as a writer, or the quality of your work." 5. And finally, tell me what’s going on in june’s world. Books you’re reading, what writing projects you’d like to share, or something else going on in your life that interests/excites you. I’m all ears :D "Thanks for asking! I don’t have a chapbook to announce like I did last time, unfortunately, but I have still been writing! Lately I’ve slowed down the terrifying pace I had originally kept up of writing, submitting, and publishing as other areas of my life have gotten more hectic. I hope the pieces I publish are, on average, better quality to make up for it. I used to read 70-something books a year, but that’s also slowed down lately. I started reading an essay collection recently called 'Some of My Best Friends' by Tajja Isen that I’m really enjoying! I’ve been reading a lot of non-fiction and personal essays over the last few years (and of course poetry) and not as many novels. I did finally read the Poppy War series and thoroughly enjoyed that! Can’t wait to find some time to read Babel. And I passed by my local used book store the other day and picked up three books on craft, so we’ll see how that goes. As for something exciting in my life right now, I’ve started rock climbing regularly this summer and unexpectedly loving it. I used to boulder, which is more arm-heavy, but since I discovered top rope this summer I’ve been very good about going once or twice every week. I like the intentionality of it. The thoughtfulness. It’s a very poet thing to say, that I enjoy this full-body workout because I can stop to think about it halfway up the wall. But I appreciate being given that chance to consider my solution while I’m working on it, the way every poem iterates through revisions. It’s also much easier on me, a person who does not have a lot of arm strength, haha. I never thought I’d become a rock climber but here we are. Hopefully I can keep it up as we enter the fall!" June Lin is a young poet. She loves practical fruits, like clementines and bananas. She tweets sometimes @junelinwrites.
1. When did you start writing? "I started writing when I started reading – around age 3. I didn’t know it was odd to see the marching lines suddenly as words. My mother loves to tell the story of how I named my baby sister when I was three and a half, A-by to match A-my. She keeps every scrap of paper I wrote on or touched when I lived at her house like emphemera trophies. This includes early bits of writing on wide-lined notebook paper and construction paper, glued down for eternity in her basement, transferred to my house over the years. I have those words and poems and stories recorded from musty paper stacks, from early stories about kittens to college term papers in French, forty pages of 20-something wanderings on Madame Bovary. I’m not a journaller, even though I buy the requisite writer journals. My writing starts and stops are still well chronicled through my mother and occasionally The Wayback Machine at defunct sites. I’ve always straddled a writing line – literary and more commercial writing. In other words, writing that doesn’t pay and writing that does. This is a long answer for a short question but the same things do come through in my non-fiction articles and fiction writing: food, family, parenting, quirkiness, sensory details, unique settings, historical aspects." 2. What drew you to write flash fiction? "I actually didn’t know I was writing (or teaching) flash fiction. I spent 20 years creating and facilitating courses through colleges and businesses. I recently went back through my emails and found that I was quoting and using early craft books that spoke of what is now called flash fiction. At the time, I was writing well over 1,000, 1,500 words and found the idea of writing ‘short’ fascinating and comfortable. In elementary school, an early speed-reading course actually set me up reading/writing flash. I developed the skill/curse of reading entire pages of text at a time, burning them into my brain. Reading and editing flash fits that process. 500 words or so at a time. My engineer husband loves to write 49-word sentences which drives me bonkers and brings out my editing red pen. I discovered in the last few years that I can write 49 word stories, all in one sentence – maybe we had the same idea all along. I watched my longform fiction morph to less than a thousand words over the years as I had kids and found myself writing in snatches of time, carrying stories around in my head. As I focused on the immediate moments of being a mother, I began to write shorter and shorter, partly out of necessity and partly as snaps of stories. I have a bad habit of ‘writing’ and ‘editing’ in my head first. At any given moment, I have several stories knocking about – it’s much easier to carry flash fiction around than a longer story." 3. Where does your inspiration come from? "My inspirations come from everywhere: street sign fonts, road signs, my family, other people’s families, old photographs, eavesdropping in Waffle Houses, billboards, news stories, nature, movies, music, books." 4. How did Ambrotypes come about? When did you realize you had material for a book? "My micro chapbook through ELJ, Editions required the stories to be under 300 words. While selecting those, I went through other things I had written/published and found I had a lot of stories over that 300 word mark and started compiling them in one document. When they were all in one place, it was enough for a full length collection. I was struck by old-fashioned photo carousels but also the dangerous process of vintage photography. The titular story was originally titled something else. I switched it to Ambrotypes and chose that as a somewhat mysterious but also simple one-word overall title. People have told me they’ve looked up the term too. I wanted to express that flipping through of photographs in albums or the discovery of a forgotten image found in an antique store shoebox." 5. What do you hope people take away from your work? "Short answer: something that resonates. I want readers to feel something, tangibly or in their heart. Remember a taste. Hear music. Think about something or someone. Feel grief. Feel joy. Laugh. Cry. The easy things to accomplish with words, of course." 6. What’s your favorite writing advice you’ve been told? "A writing teacher years ago told me she read my workshop story on the bus and that she bawled for three stops. She told me to write like that. Make people cry. Make people laugh. Make people think about your story for multiple bus stops and days." 7. What advice would you give to a writer who is interested in writing flash fiction? "Don’t describe the brick wall of a building unless someone is going to punch it later on. That corner stove had better burn the house down. Use sensory details with impact: yellow wallpaper and green neck ribbons matter. Don’t bring suitcases of words that you and your reader won’t unpack. Use beautiful language and sparse words. Include a spit of non-fiction in your stories. Do the necessary research even if it’s for one sentence or one word. Don’t include more characters than paragraphs and don’t name them with similar starting consonants or rhyming endings; readers will be confused with a Mary, Cherry, Carrie or Susan, Sandy, Sal, and Cindy. I may take that advice a little too far. I’ve discovered I often omit place and character names entirely, sometimes even gender." 8. Would you like to share what current writing project(s) you are working on? "My day/night job is also writing. On that front, I’m working on a humor piece, articles for Southern Living, product descriptions and various essays. Editing. Proofing. In literary land, I’m looking forward to SmokeLong Summer to generate some new stories. In a larger vein, I have the proverbial novel in progress, but also a surreal memoir collection out on submission and in Google docs in edits." 9. And finally, what do you enjoy doing that you don’t talk about enough. Tell me all about it! "Sleeping. Traveling. My family went to Europe in summer, 2019 and I’ve never been so glad to do the planning and the traveling. In a few short months, the pandemic hit and we would have missed those memories entirely the next summer. I read lifestyle magazines while I wait for my kids and there’s usually a stack in my car straight out of mailbox. Thanks so much!" Amy Cipolla Barnes has words at a wide range of sites including Flash Frog, Reckon Review, The Citron Review, Complete Sentence, Trampset, The Citron Review, The Bureau Dispatch, Spartan Lit, JMWW Journal, McSweeney’s and many others. Her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net, the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction, longlisted for Wigleaf50, and included in Best Small Fictions 2022. She’s a Fractured Lit associate editor, Gone Lawn co-editor, Ruby Lit assistant editor and also reads for Narratively, CRAFT, Taco Bell Quarterly, and The MacGuffin. Her debut chapbook Mother Figures was published in June, 2021 by ELJ Editions with a full length collection AMBROTYPES published by word west in March, 2022. She is also a 2021-2022 Artwire Fellow. You can find her on Twitter at @amygcb.
1. When did you start writing? "I started writing in third grade. My friend Linda and I were deeply obsessed with fantasy novels and storytelling, so we decided to write one together where we could create this magical world and populate it with characters who were so vibrant and real to us. We told each other this story, verbally, during recesses, and I would transcribe them onto notebook paper later. Through this process, I began writing more consistently and fell in love with storytelling and with the possibilities that it holds. I have also always been drawn to image and to the line itself. That is something that definitely helped me branch into poetry and to embrace the smaller-scale sense of wonder or discovery that you can get through experimenting with language." 2. What drew you to write poetry? "I actually exclusively wrote prose until the fall of 2020. What changed at that point was I’d made a lot of online writer friends who were these incredible and inspiring poets, and seeing what they were doing catalyzed my more serious exploration of poetry and the freedom it provides. The collection of poetry that really helped me get into it was Crush by Richard Siken (a very standard favorite). For me, this book was so wonderful because, in addition to how gorgeous, emotional, and skilled it is on a craft level, Siken’s often more narrative style helped me bridge the gap in my mind between prose—and the narratives I crafted in prose—and poetry. It introduced me to this new genre and opened up a lot of possibilities for exploration. One of the reasons I continue to write poetry is because of how liberating it can be, form-wise. I am a big fan of experimenting with form and fitting the form of a piece to its content, and poetry is so unlimited in that sense. Another thing about poetry that I love is the distance, or the lack of distance, between the speaker and the writer. In prose—obviously, there’s autofiction—but oftentimes in fiction, the characters are very distinct from the writer. However, in poetry, there’s a blurry area where sometimes the speaker is me, and sometimes she’s a specific facet of me talking, and sometimes she’s me in a hypothetical situation but still reflecting my fears or desires or the ideas I’m grappling with. And it can be unclear to the reader how much of me is in the speaker and how much of the speaker is me, which allows for a slight veil of privacy while discussing what can be intensely personal subjects." 3. What drew you to write prose? "Like I said before, I was initially drawn to writing prose because I adored stories, storytelling, and having this cast of characters who I could live with in my mind and on the page. That feeling of creation was something that I fell in love with at a very early age. Now, I still write prose because I love to see these characters through their arcs, as well as how they come alive in different situations or when interacting with each other. The long form also provides a lot of space to let characters, themes, and ideas develop and transform, especially in novel, which is a form I’ve recently picked up again. It creates a lot of opportunities to circle these ideas and to explore various facets of them through different characters or different sections of the project." 4. Where does your inspiration come from? "My inspiration comes from so many places! I think one of the best things about writing is that you can look at the world around you and see something simultaneously so mundane but so wonderful that you want to write about it. However, I think some of the funnier places I draw inspiration are random places online, like YouTube comment sections or Tweets or other posts that I find so funny/intriguing they stay with me as a possible seed for a piece. The most recent example of this is my poem 'My Neighbors Make a Ghost', which was inspired by a tweet where people were crafting ghosts out of chicken wire and using them as Halloween decorations. When I saw this, I thought 'That is so genius, and so strange and simple at the same time.' I guess I’m drawn to things that are very everyday, but that are imbued with some strangeness or surrealness that makes them stand out." 5. How did Inheritances of Hunger come about? When did you realize you had material for a book? "There are two possible origins for the chapbook, depending on how you define 'come about'. Technically, the first story, 'Games', was written in March of 2021. However, I did not realize I had material for a chapbook until April of 2021 when I wrote 'Changeling'. After writing that story, I looked at these pieces that I’d written consecutively and at the commonalities between them, like the prominence of hunger, desire, and cruelty, and of these familial relationships between women. With these threads in mind, I wrote some bullet points on hunger as a literalization of desire/cruelty/hurt, and how characters could play an active vs. a passive role in their hunger, and the relationships between these ideas and family. As I wrote these notes, I realized that these could be through-lines for a thematically-linked chapbook, and I began brainstorming and constructing stories along those lines." 6. Would you like to share what current writing project(s) you are working on? "I have not been writing consistently for a few months, but technically, I should be working on two novel projects. The first one is When Cicadas Sing for the Dead, the first chapter of which you can read in the 2022 YoungArts Anthology. This is a novel I’ve been working on since July of 2021, and it has transformed so much regarding structure and characters and the framework within which I try to explore my ideas. It’s been a great process so far, and I hope to finish it within the next few years. My second novel project is currently untitled, and I only have the first chapter. Still, within it, I was thinking a lot about myths, how living people become myths, and the selective memory required to make someone a myth. Going off of that idea, I was also thinking about how people interact with their myths—trying to escape their myths or entering their myths from the periphery. That was very vague, but it’s something I’ve been having fun with." 7. What’s your favorite writing advice you’ve been told? "My favorite writing advice came from my friend, Miriam, who was leaving comments on my poems. She told me I have to earn my abstractions, which really helped solidify the way I think about concrete and abstract language and imagery. After reading that comment, I’ve become very conscious about anchoring my ideas or images in the concrete before letting them blossom into the abstract so these abstractions have something to hold onto rather than floating around in a haze." 8. And finally, what do you enjoy doing that you don’t talk about enough. Tell me all about it! "One major part of my life that I don’t talk a lot about is cycling. I started biking with my family at a young age, and from eighth through twelfth grade, I mountain biked competitively. I also enjoy long-distance road biking trips, in which I load all my belongings onto the bike and ride for a few weeks like that. Something so amazing about those trips is that I get to experience the area in a much better than I could from a car. Specifically, when I was biking along Route 66, I could go on the historic Route rather than the modern highway, allowing me to see exactly where the Route shifts between alignments/pavings/widths from different time periods, as well as relics of the past like the tiny Conoco gas stations or motels. It really made for a more intimate experience, and I loved being able to experience that accumulation of history in a much more up-close way. I haven’t really written anything about biking yet, but it might happen eventually." Hear Nova read her flash piece "on building a nest." Nova Wang is probably thinking about ghosts. Her writing is forthcoming or published in publications including Frontier Poetry, Fractured Lit, and Up the Staircase Quarterly, and she tweets @novawangwrites. You can find more of her work at novawang.weebly.com.
1. BETWEEN DEATH & FLIGHT is your first collection of creative nonfiction. What drew you to write about your experiences in a detention center in the States? "I think in one way or another, this experience has been extremely present in my life and mind ever since it happened. It was a time during which I suffered a great deal of pain, but it was also super transformative for me— possibly in part because it was so painful. I don’t think I would be the person I am now if I hadn’t gone through that— which doesn’t mean it was right that it happened, but rather that it is an important experience in my life— and I wanted to find a way to create something out of it. To put into words the helplessness and the hopelessness, the sneaky transgressions and the lengths I had to go through to make it out of there in one piece. It’s not exactly the most uncommon thing to live through, you know? There were around 60 kids like me just at the specific detention center I was in, and more arrived for every one that left, and yet I’d never read a similar story to mine. So I felt the need to say something about it." 2. I loved how you wrote this collection as a series of journal entries. When you were working on this, did you know that you wanted to write this as a series of journal entries, or was that something you decided to do later as you kept writing? "I think I started writing Between Death & Flight four or five separate times, and most of those earlier versions were not written as a series of journal entries. Some of them were not even creative non-fiction, but crossed the line into fiction! Ultimately, though, I felt that using journal entries helped me convey my feelings about my confinement better, both because that format seems to naturally inspire introspection in me, and because I actually did almost-obsessively write in a journal/notebook while I was locked in there. Some fragments of the journal entries in Between Death & Flight are actual quotes deciphered from my terrible handwriting at the time." 3. How long did it take you to write this collection? "I technically began writing the first draft of Between Death & Flight sometime in May 2016— meaning the very month I ran away and was sent to the detention center. I wouldn’t say I already knew I wanted to write a book about it, because honestly at that point I still believed I’d get out within weeks rather than months. But still, even then I knew I needed to record this personal history, so I wrote— by hand, at the time. I got out 6 months later (shortly after officially becoming the longest-staying person at that detention center), and tried to finish the story, then rewrote it, then tried to turn it into fiction, then abandoned it altogether, and finally began writing the final version last fall (2021)! I took a lot of breaks because of the upsetting nature of the topic and because I do have trauma stemming from it, so it took me a few months to write the whole thing." 4. How did you feel after you wrote this book? "It’s going to sound cliché, but I felt like the weight of the sky was lifted off my shoulders. Partly: this project had been in the 'in progress' drawer of my mental filing cabinet since 2016, so to have it finished— and finished in a way that felt true and just and whole-enough— was validating. I say 'whole-enough' because I’ve realized there will always be more I can say about this traumatic time in my life, always one more messed up thing I’ll remember randomly while trying to fall asleep. Partly, too, because I felt like the story was no longer just mine to bear. It is no longer a secret I keep, no longer a silence benefitting the structures that put me in that detention center in the first place." 5. And finally, what do you hope people take away from your book? "My highest hope is that I reach other people who have felt the way I did and still do about the ways of the world— disappointed, tired, hopeless, beaten— and that Between Death & Flight helps turn those feelings into anger, which if you ask me is a hell of a powerful feeling, especially for those of us existing outside of 'the norm'." Hear Charlie read the first two chapters from his forthcoming book BETWEEN DEATH & FLIGHT. Charlie D’Aniello Trigueros (he/they) is a queer and trans author, editor, and self-proclaimed malcontent. He is the editor-in-chief of warning lines literary and author of THE ONE & THE OTHER (2021), BETWEEN DEATH & FLIGHT (2022), PLACES (forthcoming 2022, Gutslut Press), and more. His work has appeared in Wrongdoing Magazine, perhappened, the winnow, and others. Find him on twitter @beelzebadger.
Welcome to an April Fools' Day special, an interview with me! This was a LOT of fun to write, so I hope you enjoy :D 1. Why do you interview writers? "It was an excuse to learn more about my friends and promote their work. Interviewing writers started years ago while I was still an undergrad at Truman State. I wanted to beef up my resume so I became a Features writer for the school paper. Writers were often invited for readings and to lead workshops on campus. I desperately wanted to get their insight on writing, and interviewing them was the perfect way for me to get to know them better. Being a journalist has been a wonderful experience for me and definitely built my confidence as an interviewer. While I was still a journalist in undergrad, I had the dream of publishing interviews where I could do things my way. I wanted a series that exclusively focused on writers. I did other stories for the paper (my favs including the Prairie dog expert and the flutist), but I wanted to focus on writers and writers only. While I worked for the school paper I was also limited in what I could ask and it all somehow had to tie to the school. It makes sense since it is their paper, but I didn’t like the confinement. I wanted the flexibility to let the interview take a different direction if it needed to, and we might focus on things that don’t relate to the school at all. I was still able to write some banger writer interviews that still somehow included the school, but I didn’t like the limitations. Still, being a journalist in college was an invaluable experience. So, when I left school, I thought I was done with writer interviews since I no longer had a venue and nobody to interview. But when I made my author page, I thought maybe I could just interview the friends I made on Twitter and help promote their upcoming books or just talk about their writing. And that’s how my interview series came about. I’ve made a bunch of friends through interviews, and I love having full control over how my interviews are done, how my interviews are presented, having the flexibility to decide when my interviews are published, and who I want to talk to. I am grateful for everything I’ve learned while working for the college paper, but I am definitely loving the way things are now that I’m in charge." 2. Why did you start writing? "I was a boring kid growing up. While I did some sports and music, I remember a lot of time was wasted watching TV. Then when I was in high school and assigned books to read (the classics like To Kill a Mockingbird and The Catcher in the Rye) I realized with horror that, not only have I never read those books, but there were many others that I had heard of but never bothered reading. So I made a book list of important books I should read, printed the list, and started reading all those books. I still rely on book lists to this day (I’ve got award-winning book lists like Pulitzer and National Book Awards, and NPR has a great series each year called Book Concierge). But back to why I started writing. After spending years consuming books and media, I decided it was my turn to tell stories. I’d seen others do it, so what do I want to say? What do I want to explore? That’s why I started writing. It was a desire within to tell a story, and tell a story my way. With writing I could fulfill a deep need to create something that was mine to share with the world." 3. What got you into centos? “I’ve always wanted to tell stories. That being said, writing fiction proved to be a lot harder than I thought it would be. To this day fiction is still one of my greatest fears and struggles with writing. I definitely had no idea that the first thing I would take up would be poetry, and a great source of joy would come from writing centos. My journey with centos started way back in college. Fall 2017. I was a transfer student at Truman State University after getting an associate degree from St. Charles Community College. I had taken a bunch of workshops at SCC, but now I decided that in order to really pursue writing I needed a mentor - a teacher at school who would be willing to teach me. I had a kooky idea that, in order to kick up my undergrad education to grad school level, then I needed to work one-on-one with a teacher. I know there is something to be said for working with classmates and everyone is learning together, but I was arrogant, impatient, and I did not like making friends with anyone from my classes. I did not think they were serious enough about writing (like I’ve said, I was arrogant and impatient). I realized I didn’t want my peers, I wanted someone to teach me. That’s when I started looking for a writing mentor, so I went after my teachers. I thought maybe I could float a short story to them once every few weeks, and they could give me feedback and guidance. But I wasn’t so lucky with the fiction department, and I was left to my own devices. I had resigned myself to the reality that I was on my own, and the best I could get would be taking workshops. That’s when Jamie came into the picture. I had a meeting with him to become a creative writing major (you had to apply to be a part of the program, you couldn’t just declare that you are a creative writing major) and we talked about what I was interested in with writing and what I was up to in classes. It’s funny, looking back on it now, because I told him that fiction is the genre to write because fiction explores humanity, unlike poetry. Fiction deals with complex ideas and everybody wants to read fiction. And poets? They just write about leaves and feelings, big deal. I asked him what he wrote, and he said after a long pause, poetry. I was embarrassed by what I said about poetry, and I said at some point I should take a closer look at poetry, and Jamie told me that I was welcome to see him during office hours if I ever wanted to talk about poetry. Several weeks later I appeared in his office with drafts of poems for my first poetry workshop, and ever since that day, I had been bringing poems to his office hours for the rest of my time at Truman. I wrote terrible poems for a year, but Jamie was patient. At this time I was also working with another teacher named Brad. Though I had all this help, I still felt stuck. I was getting more frustrated because it was obvious that I just wasn’t getting it. Spinning my wheels and just writing whatever wasn’t going to cut it anymore, not if I wanted to write better poems. One day Jamie told me, my senior year at Truman, to bring a poem that I wanted my poems to be like. That’s how I stumbled into prose poetry, since it was similar to prose. That’s how I found How to Dismantle a Heart by Rodney Gomez and from that I wrote my first prose poem. After a year of writing garbage poems something finally clicked for me, and for the rest of the semester I wrote prose poems. Most of these prose poems appeared later in my micro chap, my first published poetry collection. Now this brings us to centos. Spring semester 2019, my final semester at Truman. I had written several prose poems that I liked, but I found myself burned out by the spring. I told Jamie that I had run out of material to write. He laughed and said that I didn’t run out of material to write, just that I didn’t know what to write. Jamie said that I had a unique way of titling prose poems, so I ought to reverse the process and take only titles and make a poem out of that. I have to break away for a second and add this necessary sidenote to understand how centos came about. Back when I was writing prose poems, the one thing I despised was titling poems. I asked Brad how to resolve this, and he suggested taking phrases from books. After I finished writing a poem, a poem that I felt was really close to being done, take a book from my bookshelf and write down phrases that catch my eye. Because the poem is in the back of my mind as I’m looking for phrases, something will jump out and it would add new meaning to the poem. I’ve used this method for all my prose poems and I’m very happy with the result. (Though I did step it up later and specifically looked for books I knew matched the theme for the poem. My Chamber of Venus, a prose poem I had written about my first pap smear and my irratation/guilt for still being a virgin at 25, that title was taken from The Wife of Bath's Tale from The Canterbury Tales because I knew there would be some saucy phrases there and would match perfectly with the poem. Sure enough, WHAM, My Chamber of Venus). Jamie knew I wasn’t creative enough to come up with those titles (and this is not insulting to me, it’s a fact. I am a simplistic writer), so when he saw the interesting titles for my poems, he asked about them, and I told him about Brad’s method. Jamie liked it and remembered it. So when I was dealing with burnout that semester, Jamie introduced me to centos. He said I should reverse the process and write a poem from the phrases I found in books since I have a talent for finding and matching phrases as titles for my prose poems. He said I ought to try it out. And so, I did. The very first cento I wrote was dost thou know me? from Station Eleven. I remember holding the library book, writing down all the phrases and then reordering the sentences. I looked at it and, thought, my god, what is this? I had no idea what would happen, if a poem or tangible piece of writing was possible but there it was right in front me. It was something new, something exciting. For the rest of the semester I grabbed more books, from my bookshelf and from the school library, and I wrote centos and loved every minute of it. After I graduated writing centos was something I kept up now and then in bursts. And usually whenever I need a confidence boost for writing, I’ll turn back to centos. Sometimes I really miss the days when I would spend weekends preparing centos, sliding the printed centos under Brad’s office door, reviewing Brad’s edits (he always used a blue pen to provide comments), talking ot him, and then just across Brad’s office I would walk to Jamie’s office where I would read the poems aloud and Jamie would provide comments. Jamie’s gift was being able to identify what projects I needed to work on, and Brad would walk me through edits, line-by-line if needed. It was Jamie who said one day I would have a full-length of centos. I didn’t believe him, so you can imagine how weird it is for me to say how proud and gobsmacked I am that my debut full-length will be coming out this summer from ELJ. Wouldn’t have been possible if I didn’t have Jamie and Brad, for they got me on this path. I still don’t know how I will feel when I hold the full-length in my hands, that, by the time it’s published, will be the culmination of three years work. Anyway, that’s the whole (and long!) tale of how I got into centos." 4. How has your writing changed since graduating college? "I had no idea what my life would be like after college, and how exactly that would affect my writing. I knew that I would get a full-time job and write whenever I could, but I didn’t really seriously consider that essentially now I have two jobs. For the rest of my life, so long as I wish to write that is, I have to straddle my working life and my writing life. One feeds the belly, and the other feeds the soul. How has my writing changed since I graduated? I have to set my own deadlines since I don’t have any more poetry sessions or workshops. The hardest thing that hit me was that I lost access to my teachers since I could no longer see them weekly to review my work. It certainly didn’t help that I didn't have a new group of people to work with. I didn’t get into grad school, since I was under the impression that the only way I could succeed with writing was attend grad school, join an MFA cohort, and continue swapping work and encouragement long after I get the degree. I was so deeply affected by graduating school and moving home that the first summer after I graduated I didn’t write that summer at all. I didn’t know what to do with myself. It scared me, facing the fact that for the first time in my life I was completely on my own. I didn’t write until writing finally found me again. Then I got a full-time job and battled exhaustion for months. I’ve finally learned to not be so harsh on myself and I’ve since realized that I write when I can. My life is stressful enough as it is and writing is the one place where I should be myself and let myself have fun and be creative. A major influence and help in my life has been the friends I made on Twitter. Watching how they balance work, school, life, and their own writing projects has been tremendously inspiring to me. When I’m with my buds I feel so incredibly motivated to work and contribute to the lit community. I never thought my cohort would be online and it would be a large group of people of varying ages and experiences. I love supporting my friends and they cheer me up greatly. It’s definitely been a long process to go from writing while in college to writing with a full-time job, but I’m in a much better place now. I had to come to terms that this is the rest of my life, fighting to write. Balancing writing with all my other obligations and responsibilities. This is the life I wanted, and I’ll keep re-calibrating as needed. It is messy, but I’m pursuing my dream of writing. How great is that?" 5. How did Butterflies Over Flame come about? When did you realize you had material for a poetry book? “Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would write a full-length collection of centos, let alone publish one. I just kept writing centos and when I thought I had written enough, I submitted chapbook manuscripts for presses to consider. I kept writing more centos since I really enjoyed writing them. I kept swapping out centos in the manuscripts, sending different chap manuscripts and at one point even micro chap manuscripts. But I never thought I could do a full-length. Then I heard the call for ELJ, heard back from Ariana, and the rest is history, as they say. Building the full-length was spread out over time, and it took a little over two years to complete. I didn’t have a full-length manuscript in mind, all I did was pursue my latest idea for a cento project and worked on that until I wore myself out. Here are some of my mini cento projects that are included in the full-length, with examples of centos in each section. Some centos have been published, and some of them are making their debut in the full-length:
6. Playlist for your full-length? "Ha, nope! While working on this manuscript, I would choose a classical composer (I played oboe growing up and my brother is a musician so orchestral music and piano hold a very special place in my heart) and listen to them while I harvested and then reassembled phrases. I don’t have names of all the composers I listened for every single cento since I only started doing that recently but some examples in the full-length: Love Letter - Chopin, Of Becoming before Becoming - Rachmaninoff, and Mosaic - Debussy. Some of them were video game soundtracks, and some of them were jazz or piano albums. Sometimes I put a lot consideration into what I listen to in the background while I work, and sometimes I just find something that fits the mood I’m in and start working. There is one song that I always associate with centos, and that song is What’s This from The Nightmare Before Christmas. It matches exactly how I felt when I first discovered centos. I was a frustrated writer who found something magical that reignited my love of the craft and made me look at poems from a new, exciting perspective. This empty place inside of me is filling up I simply cannot get enough I want it, oh, I want it Oh, I want it for my own I've got to know I've got to know What is this place that I have found? Yes, all that exactly. And writing centos has been my happy place ever since." 7. Analyze a cento. “Clearly for this interview I’ve leaned hardcore into my undergrad days, so I’m going to analyze a cento built specifically with my teachers and Kirksville (the northeastern town where Truman State is) in mind. I do have a cento built from the works of my cento teachers Brad and Jamie but it’s unpublished and written for the full-length, so you’ll have to wait till that comes out to see it :^). But this cento I’m about to analyze also appears in the full-length. Anyway, here’s Summer to Squander. This cento pulls from Prairie Architecture by Monica Barron & Weathermanic by James D'Agostino. One Friday evening we were sipping beer at a table by the window watching the sky. When Larry died, I bought this farm cheap, and moved here alone. A sunset at the edge of town where sometimes the distant clouds look like mountains. The puckered hills. Houses without addresses, mailboxes clustered elsewhere. The power is still on. Camille played cello. So many years later the ways of an old love persist. Say what you want about memory, it can be so clean, as if it were enough to go around. Cold unintelligible tongues lash me awake. Absence is not the dark thing I imagined. "The knotted thirsting tangleways of self. Anyone who tells stories like that," he said, rocking back on his chair, rocking forward, "probably ten years too late. Camille and the cello come and go. It’s your life you’re going to have to live it. Still your story arcs." I had no idea who we were. The luck of those with a bit of sense and grace. Maybe it’s time. Holler my truths to the blue, blue distant hills. The lights went out. Written in summer 2020 when the pandemic broke out. It had been a year since I graduated Truman, and was feeling nostalgic. Jamie you’ve heard a lot about, so now let me introduce you to Monica. Monica was another one of my teachers at Truman, and a gifted poet. Jamie and Monica also happen to be friends. I wanted to write a cento to honor their friendship, and I had both their books on my bookshelf. I knew right away they would be a good match. Monica writes narrative poetry, so she would provide the foundation I like to have with my centos. Since her work is more prosaic, it will ground the cento. She has characters, voices, and scenic details of her home in Missouri. Then I would pull in Jamie, a writer who would provide quirky phrases and would say things that would jolt the reader. So I got to work. When writing centos, I have no idea how a cento might turn out and usually I hope for the best when I start assembling it. This cento turned out so well and I am really proud of this one. This whole cento is a story. Here we have two old friends drinking beer and watching the sunset. They are older, probably past middle age. The first speaker, whose words are primarily drawn from Monica’s poetry, laments a lost lover. Living alone on a farm. The second speaker, whose words are primarily pulled from Jamie’s work, counters the first speaker. I knew I wanted the second speaker (knowing Jamie’s work as well as I do) to say something ridiculous that would make the first speaker roll her eyes at him, as if to say, will you please take what I’m saying seriously? Then the second speaker continues with imparting knowledge, while rocking on his rocking chair. The second speaker reminds her that though the love of her life (or a love of her life) is gone, her story still continues. It is her choice how she should proceed with what is left of her life. The first speaker wonders if it is time to let go. I approached this cento with the intent to honor my teachers and friends, but as so often happens with my centos, they reveal something about me and what I was going through at the time I wrote the cento. For this cento, written in summer 2020 I was going through heartbreak. I had trouble letting go of my ex. And my god those words came through. So many years later the ways of an old love persist. Absence is not the dark thing I imagined. But then the second speaker coming through with the words I needed to hear. It’s your life you’re going to have to live it. Still your story arcs. Arranging those words on the page, and watching this story unfold, it felt like I was on the porch steps listening in on this conversation and applying what I overheard to my own life. So, not only can centos surprise me, but sometimes I can learn something from them too." 8. Would you like to share what current writing project(s) you are working on? "Yes! On the horizon is the long-awaited dream and nightmares anthology. The idea for this collection came from something I tweeted. I thought it would be cool if there was a collaborative chapbook where writers contributed a poem/piece from their dreams or nightmares. My friends really liked the idea, so I opened the door and asked people if they would want to partake in this project. I was definitely knocked over by the enthusiasm and I’m happy (stunned, humbled, thrilled, etc.) to say that 36 writers are included in the anthology. It’s taking so long to finally get this published since a bunch of things happened in my life that prevented this book from being published sooner, but I am hopeful that it will be later this spring when the book is finally released. It’s weird because I basically became temporary editor-in-chief of what I would consider a pop-up issue. It’s weird being in charge of a project like this, especially since I’ve never done anything like this before. I was unbelievably lucky that the friends I made on Twitter have been super helpful and eager to help launch this project (shout-out to Kate, Rachael, K., and Aleah!). This project has been a labor of love and I can’t wait to finally publish this and show off my friends and their incredible work. As far as my own writing projects are concerned, right now I’m working on my second novel. I’m really trying to push myself to write fiction even though it scares me. And I’ve got an idea for another full-length collection of centos, but at the moment I’m leaving the next cento project on the back burner." 9. What’s your favorite writing advice you’ve been told? "Just write the damn thing. That’s what my fiction writing professor Prajwal Parajuly said. I get trapped by my own anxiety about writing and finishing a project and his advice of just writing the damn thing is the best writing advice I’ve ever heard. You can’t work with a draft if you don’t have anything written, so get over yourself and just write it." 10. And finally, what do you enjoy doing that you don’t talk about enough? Tell me all about it! "Road trips! I love taking road trips to coffee shops. This was something that started way back in Truman like centos and interviewing writers. During the week I’d be trapped at school, and on Saturday I wanted to get away from it all. One day I thought it would be fun to travel south to Columbia and hang out at a coffee shop for the morning just to see something different. I knew the route since I had to take Hwy 63 to get back home to St. Louis. I passed Columbia many times but I never actually stayed there before. And wouldn’t there be a lot of coffee shops since Columbia is a much bigger college town than Kirksville? When I got to Columbia and settled in a coffee shop, I thought, what if I went to other towns and tried out their coffee shops? And that’s how I got into road tripping during college. I would look up towns, find good coffee shops, and first thing Saturday morning I was on the move. Taking road trips was something I kept up with for the rest of my time at Truman. I’ve been to a lot of towns, usually within a two hour radius of Kirksville. And some of the places I went to was Quincy, Illinois. Keokuk, Iowa. Hannibal, Missouri. Jefferson City, Missouri. Burlington, Iowa. The farthest I’ve gone was Kansas City, Missouri, and Iowa City, Iowa. Though I graduated college almost three years ago now, I still take road trips periodically, especially when I feel the need to get away. I’ll always love my road trips. By taking road trips and exploring I’ve discovered towns that have provided (or will provide) settings for the novels I’m working on. One day I promise I’ll talk all about that :D" Hear Aura read her cento in my dreams. Aura Martin is a writer from Missouri. She is the author of two poetry books, with a third forthcoming from ELJ Editions in 2022. Aura’s work has appeared in EX/POST, Kissing Dynamite, perhappened mag, and elsewhere. In her free time, she likes to run, read submissions at Flypaper, and take road trips to local coffee shops. Find Aura on Twitter @instamartin17.
1. Why did you start writing? “It’s hard to pinpoint a specific reason. I remember when I was in kindergarten, my teacher would pick a student to be the ‘The Star of the Day’ and would have the whole class practice their handwriting by copying a sentence with a fun fact about them. For me, it was ‘Meily likes telling stories.’ The thing is, I don’t really remember writing anything until the following year, when my first grade teacher told me that it was Mickey Mouse’s birthday and I decided that the best way to celebrate was to write a self-insert fanfiction of me celebrating his birthday with him. Throughout elementary and middle school, I wrote on and off, dreaming about becoming an author duo with one of my friends. But once I got into high school, it didn’t feel as realistic anymore. I used writing as an emotional outlet and a way of recording memories, but I wasn’t trying to weave fantastical stories the way I used to. It wasn’t until college apps were approaching and I was getting an existential crisis about what I wanted to do with my life when I was looking back on my brief existence and realized I couldn’t see a future for myself that didn’t involve writing. That’s when I discovered writing twt and started submitting to litmags!” 2. Where do you draw inspiration? “Haha, well as I always say in my bio: from my love life, my identity crises, and my dog! To an extent, those are all definitely true. But I think it’s better to say that my writing is inspired by my desire to preserve my thoughts. Every waking moment, we have a constant backing track of thoughts and yet they are so temporary and fleeting. We are so caught up in the past and the future that we don’t appreciate the thoughts grounding us to our present. Sometimes, I try to track my different trains of thoughts and it makes my brain hurt, so instead, I try recording them in my notes app. It’s kind of like a quick-write exercise without any time limit! Then when I’m in a writing mood, I go through my word vomit of a notes app and polish the thoughts I feel best represent my current mood.” 3. How do you title poems? “I love puns and alliteration, so I try to make sure my titles have some sort of wordplay! For example, the title ‘Playing God’ both references the video-game motifs in the poem and carries the meaning of writers ‘playing’ the part of a god. I tend to prefer shorter titles because I think it’s cool to pack so much meaning in such brevity, though I think longer titles are fun and witty in their own way too!” 4. Who are your go-to poets/writers? “I find that I usually return to certain books and poems more than I do writers, but some of my favorite authors are Adam Silvera and Shelley Parker-Chan! Regarding poets, I don’t think anyone’s poetry has impacted me as much as my friends’, whether they’re ones I’ve made through writing twitter or not. Some of my favorites are Joyce Liu, Laura Ma, Kayleigh Sim, Dhwanee Goyal, Trini Rogando, Kaya Dierks, and my roommate! I can go on and on listing them but I think I’ll stop here…” 5. It says on your author page that most of your works are first drafted at 1 AM. How did you become a night writer? “Maybe my bio has been a little misleading…I actually sleep pretty early, at least according to my definition of early (before 2)! I usually get ideas at night while I’m trying to fall asleep, since that’s when I have the most time to think. I consider my dumping-all-my-thoughts-into-my-notes-app-until-my-brain-is-empty stage to be more like something between brainstorming and drafting rather than actual writing. I usually do the proper writing in the late afternoon or before bed because that’s when I tend to have the most uninterrupted free time.” 6. Did college affect your writing, like how you write or what you write about? “First of all, I definitely write a lot less now that I’m in college. Most days I’m too busy to write or even think about anything other than what I have to do for school. The atmosphere at college about making life-long friends and becoming the person you want to be has definitely influenced what I write about though. I haven’t refined or published any of these new pieces yet, but I’ve been exploring vulnerability, ambition, and the role we play in others’ lives. I’ve also been writing more about my family history, though that’s more because I’m older and know more about it now than it is about being in college.” 7. Would you like to share what current writing project(s) you are working on? “I don’t have any big plans in the works right now, but I do have some mini goals of poems I’d like to try writing! Particularly, I’d like to try writing more form poetry like ghazals, villanelles, and sonnets. More concrete and experimental poetry would be cool too, since I love playing with the visuals of a poem to enhance its meaning. Currently, I’m working on a longer prose poem divided into numbered sections. It was actually one of the poems I came up with for the dream/nightmare anthology!” 8. What do you hope people take away from your work? “For me, publishing poetry is like sending things out into a void and then never thinking about it again. Once a poem’s been published, I move on to the next thing. Writing is a really unique experience for me because it feels like I’m emptying my thoughts and emotions and then permanently sealing them away into a poem. It's very cathartic but also a little bittersweet to lose touch with how I felt when I was writing that poem. It’s hard for even me to tap back into those emotions, let alone imagine what others would take away from my extremely personal poems. But if someone read my work and found something they could relate to, I think that would be really special. I hope that it would give them solace that they are not alone. Other than that though, I’ll be happy enough if they notice all the puns I cram into my poems and titles because I am very proud of them!” 9. What’s your favorite writing advice you’ve been told or happened to overhear? Or what writing advice would you offer? “It’s okay to take breaks. You don’t have to push yourself to write when it’s just not happening. While you’re going about your life, you will eventually find something that inspires you to write again. I promise. I’ve pretty much been in a writing slump with brief intermissions since I submitted my college apps! But I’m not going to force myself to write if I have nothing I want to write about. Would I be able to write something interesting if I tried using a prompt or something? Maybe. Maybe it would be refreshing and new and good and I would love it. I have this belief that technically, it is possible for anyone to write about anything. Everyone has at least a bit of a thought on everything. But that doesn’t mean I have to write about how much I hate the spiderweb between my dorm window and fan, or how picturesque the barren trees lining my street are, or how simultaneously unsettling and beautiful the blue light from my ceiling router is. If I wrote about anything and everything, I would combust. And so would my notes app. So I say, write whenever you get the creeping urge to. It will happen when it happens.” 10. And finally, what do you enjoy doing that you don’t talk about enough? Tell me all about it! “Very generic, but I love music! I took piano lessons when I was younger, though I only revisited it again during high school. Though to be honest, I still haven’t recovered my piano-playing skills very much yet... I’ve also been playing mobile rhythm games since middle school! My family is pretty musical too. My older sibling was actually a film scoring major and I remember after they started going to college, they started talking really critically about music, pointing out specific parts that worked well and didn’t. So I gradually learned to think about music differently so that we could talk about it. It’s so fun pointing out trends in different genres or listening to how music progresses during a scene of a movie or tv show. Recently, I’ve also been playing around with video editing! Syncing footage to the best of the music always gives me such an adrenaline rush. Just like a good line break or diction, it all fits together perfectly.” Hear Meily read her poem "A Cat’s Fourth Life in the Body of a Dog." Bio: Meily Tran (she/her) is a college freshman from Southern California. Most of her works are first drafted at 1 AM and are inspired by her tragic sapphic love life, sporadic identity crises, and beloved pet chihuahua. Twice a week or so, she rambles on twitter @tran_scendence.
1. Why did you start writing? "I started writing when I was about 10 years old. I kept journals, wrote lots of letters, poems, and stories. I tried to write a novel about a thirteen year-old girl from the midwest who wanted to be a ballerina and had a chance to move to New York City for dance school. I still have this novel attempt - it is in a bunch of tiny little notebooks including illustrations! I also read a lot as a child and decided I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. I would pretend that I was a writer. I set up an office in my closet with a cardboard box for a desk and found some old glasses to wear. I messed up my hair and shoved a pencil behind my ear. This was my idea of a real writer - unkempt and busily scrawling away! This was inspired by a movie I saw called 84 Charing Cross Road based on the life of writer Helene Hanff." 2. Where do you draw inspiration? "Writing makes me so happy and I absolutely love poetry. I am truly passionate about it and I draw inspiration from a variety of places - from my experiences, research for the book I’m working on, even from a pair of boots or a pile of logs in my yard. I tend to see poems everywhere! I frequently mine my old journals for material. I also participate pretty frequently in different generative writing classes and draw a lot of inspiration from those." 3. What is your method of writing? Notebooks, computer? "I use both notebooks and computer as part of my writing process. When I sit down to write, it is usually at a computer. However, I often get ideas when I am not sitting at the computer so I carry notebooks around with me everywhere. I keep one in my purse and one in my car so that I can jot things down on the go. I also use my phone to jot down ideas. For revising and editing I always work from a typed version on the computer but I have many first drafts that happen on paper." 4. How do you know when a poem is done? "I know when a poem is done when I feel satisfied that I have completely expressed what I want to convey in a way that I find satisfying. When it feels like it flows and makes the impact I am looking for then I know I am done. It’s a gut feeling but it doesn’t always come easy and I often struggle with endings." 5. Who are your go-to poets/writers? "My favorite poets include Maggie Smith, Nikki Giovanni, Mary Oliver, Rumi, and Maya Angelou. I love to read anything by Anne Lammott, Mary Karr, Dani Shapiro, and Elizabeth Gilbert. I have so many poets and writers that I enjoy reading but these are my go-tos." 6. What do you do when you’re in a writing slump? "When I am in a writing slump, I try not to panic and tell myself that it will not last forever. I try not to get too down about it and instead just let myself be where I am. Sometimes it just means that it is time for absorption and stillness instead of churning out words. Meditation can be an effective way for me to spark creativity again. I will also often listen to my favorite books about writing such Dani Shapiro’s Still Writing and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird when I am in a slump and these always get me excited about writing and inspire me!" 7. Would you like to share what current writing project(s) you are working on? "I am working on trying to publish my first chapbook of poems, called Firmer Ground. I always have a variety of different poems in progress. Aside from poetry, I also like to write short creative nonfiction pieces and have a few in progress. I have been working for a while on an historical fiction novel based on the lives of my maternal ancestors. That is a huge project that involves both a lot of research and a lot of imagination. This year, one of my writing goals is to become more comfortable and confident with short story writing so I am focusing on learning and practicing that form as well." 8. What do you hope people take away from your work? "I hope that people take away something that they can relate to and that touches or inspires them in some way. I hope people get a sense of hope and resilience. My poetry chapbook and my novel in progress have similar themes. Both deal with bridging the gap between generations and self, hurt and healing and explore the place where surviving and enduring morph into thriving and reclaiming. I feel that my work can serve as a reminder that even though things can get shaky, there is a way to firmer ground." 9. What’s your favorite writing advice you’ve been told or happened to overhear? Or what writing advice would you offer? "I am a firm believer in Anne Lamott’s sh*tty first draft since you cannot edit what is not there. Sometimes I can write something in my head and type it up and it’s all there because I have thought about it thoroughly and for a long time. Usually, though, I need to write a bunch of junk I end up deleting but it will get me where I need to go. I think it often works well to write more than is necessary in initial drafts so a lot of my process is removing the extra. I often put a piece of writing away for a while before coming back to it to take a fresh look. I have trusted readers that I rely on to help me workshop my pieces." 10. And finally, what do you enjoy doing that you don’t talk about enough? Tell me all about it! "Writing is not my full time job but I do have a full time job that I really love. I work as an attorney for a company that makes technology for people without natural speech. Our mission is to provide solutions that enable individuals without a voice to become successful communicators. Our mission is literally to give voices and I absolutely love getting to be part of the work that we do. It is very gratifying and inspiring to be part of something that makes a huge positive difference in people’s lives!" Hear Beth read her prose "The Shawl." Beth Mulcahy (she/her) is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and writer whose work has appeared in various journals, including Full House Literary and Roi Faineant Press. Her writing bridges the gaps between generations and self, hurt and healing. Beth lives in Ohio with her husband and two children and works for a company that provides technology to people without natural speech. Her latest publications can be found here: https://linktr.ee/mulcahea.
1. Why did you start writing? "I have always been invested in language — the aesthetics, the meaning, and the structure. One of my favorite things to do is to find connections between languages and break words apart by etymology. As a child, I never was consciously aware of my linguistic abilities, but I have memories of making anagrams for my parents to solve and being that kid who would guess the Hangman word on the second try. Words have always been inherently pretty to me and my first true love. During elementary school, I wrote silly stories that I lost interest in after a week in favor of other hobbies, like art, ballet, and martial arts. It was in sixth grade when I began writing fanfiction and decided that writing was going to be my thing. Looking back, that decision was important to me because it was the first hobby that I developed outside of external influence. I switched from prose to poetry in my sophomore year of high school during my English teacher's poetry unit. That unit was the lightbulb moment when poetry just made sense. For our final project, we had to write 17 poems. Writing that much for two months gave me the momentum I needed, and I never really stopped since. Poetry is such an integral part of my identity that I sometimes forget that writing and language claimed me before I claimed them." 2. Where do you draw inspiration? "Maybe it’s possession (or a blessing from the Muses), but there are moments when words naturally flow. Slowly, a scene unveils, and I am left painting the rest of the poem. I think that process stems from making connections in my own life and the media I consume and then merging them in my writing. The end-product is a love letter of what currently haunts me. Because writing is also the art of analysis, I am interested in the intersectional. I love incorporating myth, language, and science in my work and seeing how different themes interact with poetry. They are all mirrors for the same world we live in and the humanity we are a part of. Poetry’s power lies in connection, and it’s my role as the poet to leverage that power to search for how the world is interrelated. I am currently trying to be more honest in my writing. I am going through a period of reconciliation with my history and experiences, and it just comes with growing up. While my already published work relied more on the themes that I am familiar with (i.e. childhood, nostalgia, and culture), what I write now bleeds into vulnerability and experimentation. I don’t know where this new style will take me, but I am glad that it is through poetry that I will build the foundation for my exploration and growth." 3. What is your method of writing? Notebooks, computer? "Usually, I write on my computer! Because all poems have to be typed up in the end, writing on a laptop gives me a better sense of what the poem will potentially look like. Many of my poems originate from my Notes app, so the act of just transcribing ideas from brainstorming to Google Docs allows me to assess them from a new angle and if they are still worth completing. It is my ritual as if saying: 'I now commit myself to see this idea through and watch it bloom.' A recent habit I’ve picked up is printing my poems, cutting them into stanzas, and trying to rearrange them in a way that makes sense. Physically interacting with the poem and playing around with it with my hands is just very helpful. The more perspectives and directions I find, the better, since much of my genius lies in sudden sparks and old obsessions." 4. How do you title poems? "I title poems mainly by vibes. Some poems just come with a title, while others have to be derived by working backward after I finish the poem. I see titles as a preview of what the reader can expect from the poem or what the poem couldn’t say." 5. Who are your go-to poets? "I love this question! My classic fallbacks are Sally Wen Mao, Anne Carson, Kaveh Akbar, Alicia Ostriker, Chen Chen, and Leila Chatti. Just reading their work makes me want to write my magnum opus. This list, however, would not be complete without my writing Twitter friends! If you are one of them and you’re reading this right now: 'Hi! I love you! You inspire me to take my craft to greater heights every day!' They are my catalyst, and reading their work leaves me breathless and wanting more, which usually leads to me writing my own work. You can say it’s a wholesome positive feedback loop." 6. On your author page you have a unique feature where you include bookmarks linking work by other writers. What brought this about? "It started when I read Steph Chang’s 'Ghazal for the Moon Maiden' from COUNTERCLOCK. Needless to say, I was very much in love. I just kept on revisiting that site till the point it got a bit ridiculous, so I created a bookmarks page, following the footsteps of my many writer friends. Now, the bookmarks page is half a storage place and half a shrine to the pieces that left an imprint on me. The feelings that I felt when reading those pieces is what I want to emulate in my own writing. It’s the page that I send to my friends if they ask for writing recommendations and the page that I read when I’m feeling down. The bookmarks page is my home port, and I always welcome rediscovering the magic within it." 7. What do you do when you’re in a writing slump? "I haven’t been in a slump for a while now, and I think that may have been due to the adrenaline rush of discovering the writing community and the cycle of writing, submitting, and publishing. I stress-write a lot (Fight, Flight, or Write!), and the past few months have been pretty harrowing with college applications. But now that things are starting to calm down, I think a slump will soon come. Writing slumps don’t bother me as much as they once did. I look at slumps as opportunities to hone my craft in smaller bites and develop new skills. This change in perspective has definitely made me more forgiving to myself. I plan on using the next slump to learn HTML, brainstorm fanfics, and study classical Chinese!" 8. Would you like to share what current writing project(s) you are working on? "I’m working on a personal project where I write poems dedicated to my friends! I want to get them published in print magazines and give my friends physical copies before my high school graduation. Since there is a great chance that we will never be as close as we are right now, I wish to give my friends poems to remember me by and myself the closure to say what I will never be able to say again. It is an emotional rollercoaster, but I am happy that I chose to do this. I want to encapsulate our memories in my poetry." 9. What do you hope people take away from your work? "I once saw a tweet saying that a stanza means room in Italian, and it stuck with me. I hope when people read my poetry, they walk through a cute gallery with light streaming through the windows and leave with a feeling of wholeness and completion. My dream is that people feel they have read something worth their time and that a fraction of the poem stays with them – may it be a glimpse of imagery, a clever line, or a shimmery feeling." 10. And finally, what do you enjoy doing that you don’t talk about enough? Tell me all about it! "I love watching video essays! I started watching them for character analysis and fan theories, but it has since then expanded to many other topics. Right now, I’m into Internet mysteries, quantum physics, breakdowns of horror video games, probably because these are the things that I will never understand. I like scaring myself to build tolerance and to satisfy my morbid curiosity. I am also behind in pop culture so video essays are my way of catching up and understanding the origins behind them. I want to start a video essay channel on YouTube someday. I don’t know what it will be about, but I want it to scream Laura and be something I will dig to page 6 of Google searches for." Hear Laura read her poem "to you, two thousand light-years later." Bio: Laura Ma is a young writer from California. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Lumiere Review, Parentheses Journal, Claw & Blossom and elsewhere. She loves light, wings, and all things that fly. Find her on Twitter @goldenhr3.
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writersAmy Cipolla Barnes
Cristina A. Bejan Jared Beloff Taylor Byas Elizabeth M Castillo Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar Rachael Crosbie Charlie D’Aniello Shiksha Dheda Kate Doughty Maggie Finch Naoise Gale Emily M. Goldsmith Lukas Ray Hall Amorak Huey Shyla Jones B. Tyler Lee June Lin June Lin (mini) Laura Ma Aura Martin Calia Jane Mayfield Beth Mulcahy Nick Olson Ottavia Paluch Pascale Maria S. Picone nat raum Angel Rosen A.R.Salandy Carson Sandell Preston Smith Rena Su Magi Sumpter Nicole Tallman Jaiden Thompson Meily Tran Charlie D’Aniello Trigueros Kaleb Tutt Sunny Vuong Nova Wang Heath Joseph Wooten Archives
December 2022
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