1. Why did you start writing?
"Ooh, if you’re meaning in general…Well…the truth is, I don’t know. I started writing creatively as early as I can remember. It was mostly picture books, Charmed fanfiction, lyrics, and poems here and there when I was in elementary school. In middle school, I mostly wrote song lyrics. I had notebooks full and called them “albums”. Almost none of those lyrics were put to actual music—just a chaotic mess of random notes. I wrote short stories during that time as well—all in notebooks—and I remember thinking I was writing the best things ever. I wasn’t, of course. Occasionally, I’d write free verse poetry in fuchsia colored font around that time, too, but I often lost it on the computer since it crashed so frequently. Then, in high school, I switched almost completely to writing poetry. In 9th grade, I was still writing lyrics quite often, especially because I was attending an arts program after school for a music focus. When I stopped going, I wrote poetry-only and a bit of prose. In undergrad, I wrote so little. I was an English major, so of course I had creative writing courses, but I only wrote what was required of me. I lost a lot of creativity in those years, especially since I let academia decide what was and wasn’t poetry at the time. In the past year or so, I’ve been writing a lot of only poetry. So, anyway, why I started writing? I don’t know. I’ve just always wanted to create."

2. Tell me the origin story of MIXTAPES. When did you realize you had material for a book in your hands?
"MIXTAPES started as three different manuscripts: Gathering Wild, Where All Your Nightmares Converge, and How to Start a Séance. The first one, Gathering Wild, was my final for my junior year poetry class. It mostly revolved around animals/animal imagery, and only three poems made it to MIXTAPES. The second one, Where All Your Nightmares Converge, was written after my poetry class. It mostly had all the same poems in the previous manuscript, including the poems that made it to MIXTAPES, but it focused on dreams/nightmares this time around. I stopped working with that manuscript in the summer of 2018—when I was going into my senior year of undergrad. Then, it became How to Start a Séance, and themes of dead relationships began to emerge. Interestingly, that third manuscript is the closest to MIXTAPES’ final form—at least The B-Sides (second side), anyway. There was quite a bit of fluff though because I was incorporating too much from the previous two manuscripts. The poems I kept for The B-Sides dealt with themes of bad relationships and self-discovery, but they are portrayed in a realist lens. Then, I started writing the first side, You In Absentia, frantically in my notes app in the summer of 2020. What I mean by frantically is that I had this need to get it out, some kind of emotional purging. I can’t explain it. While You In Absentia mostly deals with topics from my youth, it still deals with themes of bad relationships and self-discovery at its core. Of course, all the poems in the first side are surrealist. I had to make MIXTAPES a tête-bêche because of the surrealist and realist concepts—two halves of one whole, two different perspectives of my childhood and adolescence/young adulthood. The musicality of it all was mostly an (happy) accident when I was writing its official first draft, but I think poetry chapbooks, in general, can have a similar vibe to an album with the 10-15 track listings/poem titles and all." 

3. What emotions guided you in writing MIXTAPES?
"This is very much a loaded question. I wrote poems for MIXTAPES from 2017-2020. They were all quite difficult emotions to process because they are (mostly) related to trauma. I wrote about bad friendships and relationships, sexual abuse and dealing with chronic illnesses, the death of things, living on my own for the first time. There was definitely a lot of heartbreak that I was tapping into."

4. Your book has two parts. How did this come about?
"Oh, whoops! I kind of already explained it. Anyway, I realized that the poems I was writing in the notes app last summer echoed the same themes as the poems leftover from How to Start a Séance, so I just decided that they would be two parts of a whole book. One side surrealist, and one side realist of the same themes." 

5. You designed covers for both MIXTAPES and swerve. How did you get involved in design?
"The first time I ever wanted to learn design was in 9th grade. I was not good at it, and I weaseled out of that class with a D. In college, I offered to create a poster for a night of one act plays—I don’t know why, I didn’t really know anything about design—and I used Canva, as suggested, to create it. Canva has taught me so much about design, and it was in a much more easily digested way than that class I had in high school. Ever since junior year of college, I’ve used Canva for various things—flyers, logos, homework, presentations, and more. MIXTAPES’ cover went through three significant edits (and versions), at least. I had two versions for swerve, but I stuck with using a photograph from Unsplash​, a site with free stock photography. The font and colors for both covers were decided on mostly a whim." 

6. What do you hope people take away from your writing?
"I always hope that if someone doesn’t necessarily understand the words, they will be able to see the imagery and find meaning in that. Other than that, I want to offer the freedom of interpretation. Poetry, when read, is often a mirrored reflection of the reader—and let it be so."

7. What inspires you?
"Dreams, nightmares, music, nature, and the past are my biggest inspirations."

8. What other writing project(s) do you hope to take on someday?
"I really want to write a full-length poetry book sometime soon. We’ll see how that goes. I’d also like to start writing micro-fiction and other short fiction, but my track record in writing that way…well…it’s not great. All the prose was actually poetry in disguise." 

9. What writing advice do you find totally useless?
"Write every single day is really useless. It’s also reductive because there is so much more nuance to writing than simply putting pen to paper (fingers to keyboard). I think that advice is the best way of amplifying imposter syndrome, too." 

10. And finally, what do you enjoy doing that you don’t talk about enough. Tell me all about it!
"I’m fairly open about other creative ventures I dabble in, such as photography and music composition. I’m not very refined with either, and my piano skills haven’t really improved much since middle school. This also makes me realize that I don’t talk about my love for video games enough! I’ve always played—mostly Nintendo games—ever since I can remember. I will always win at Mario Party 5 mini-games, and that’s a fact. I’ve probably played through The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time so much that I can replay it in my sleep. Actually, I’m currently in a GURPS (Generic Universal Role Playing System) campaign with my fiancé and mutual friends that follows Ocarina of Time’s storyline, while incorporating elements from other Zelda games. This campaign is going on three years already, and we still haven’t made it to the Forest Temple! There’s a lot of adventures and random roleplaying days where we don’t even make it to the main mission. It’s all a lot of fun." 

Hear Rachael read her poem "Where All My Nightmares Converge" (p.46).

1. What drew you to write poetry?
"I wrote some as a kid, but I always thought I was going to be a novelist. I still have an interest in novels, but my world was opened more to poetry when I interned for two semesters with the journal Mid-American Review. Getting to read poetry submissions along with working with the poetry MFA candidates as an undergrad student really shaped my journey with poetry. I’m only on my third year of actively writing and publishing, and I’m only now starting to find my own voice I think."

2. When did you call yourself a poet?
"I actually called myself a poet pretty early on. I believe it was after I had my first two or three poems come out my senior year of undergrad that I finally added “poet” to my Twitter bio. I felt self-conscious about it because I wasn’t that experienced, and I was in my school’s literature major, not its creative writing major. In some ways, it felt like overstepping. But I knew that that feeling was always going to be there as a writer, so I needed to go ahead and claim the title, as I encourage everyone else to do, too. You have to be your biggest supporter and advocate."

3. How do you draft poems? Do you use a computer, or do you write them by hand?
"I stress myself out with drafting honestly. I always go into a poem wanting to write as polished of a draft as I can. I still revise, but I always want the draft to be really solid. It’s such unnecessary pressure that I put on myself, but my brain just… does it. I draft on my computer and have actually just recently switched from drafting in Word to using Google Docs. I also often have Wikipedia pulled up while I’m drafting for easy reference when writing about certain words, topics, etc."

4. What role does music play in your writing process?
"I love this question! I always have music on while I write. Sometimes I’ll turn on music that shares a mood/vibe with the poem I want to write to help get my head in that zone, but sometimes I’ll just have my favorite music shuffling in the background and that always helps keep me centered, too. One thing I love is that sometimes I’ll hear a word in a song while I’m writing and I’ll say, “Ooh! Okay, that’s a word I haven’t used in a poem. I’m gonna use that word today.” In this way, I think listening to music helps keep my language from getting too repetitive."

5. When do you know your poem is done?
"Do we ever know? Joking aside, one of the first things I often do when going into a poem is deciding how it’s going to end, whether that’s generating the actual closing line(s) or just having a general idea. Then, I work toward that ending. Sometimes I reach that ending and am very pleased with how the poem unfurls, but sometimes I reach it and am either not emotionally fulfilled with it or don’t think it’s earned its ending. So I think for me it’s really a combination of getting to its ending in a satisfying way and existing as something that fulfills me personally."

6. Fairy tales interest you. When did you realize you wanted to include some of that magic into your own work?
"I love this question so much, because fairy tales really are my whole life. I always loved fairy tales, and that love was tattooed into me (and onto me because I have the show’s name on my arm) with the show Once Upon a Time, which aired from my freshman year of high school until my junior year of undergrad—very formative years for me. Thus, when I began writing more seriously, I knew that I had to use that passion in my work. The trick then has been learning how to create fairy magic in my poems and stories without them being too cliché, too overdone, or even too optimistic. I want them to be my own unique form of fairy magic that has a darker edge at times. I call myself a fairy, and I always lovingly call my boyfriend a mermaid, so we really live in this fairy world, and it only makes sense to me for me to translate that into my work."

7. What other writing project(s) would you like to take on?
"I have a couple of fiction projects that I want to work on that all generally revolve around queer fairy tales, but I also want to get into creative nonfiction, which I’ve never written before. I even joke that I would love to write a memoir about falling in love during the pandemic. My boyfriend and I live on opposite sides of the U.S. but found out we have very interesting mutual connections. We met in person right before the pandemic began, and navigating that evolving relationship from over two thousand miles apart during lockdowns and everything else has been so challenging. But it’s really our mutual connections and other wild—I would argue fated—things that make me want to write about us. For example, we found out that we lived half of a mile from each other as kids but then didn’t meet until we were 23 and living so far apart. It’s wild. "

8. What do you hope people take away from your writing? 
"Like Once Upon a Time with me, I really hope people can take hope from my writing. Even my poems that have the darker edge I talked about have a sense of hope to them because that’s something that’s really important to me. I also really want people to take magic from my work. And I don’t mean fantastical magic, but rather the magic of the everyday. As an adult, after I hadn’t been able to while growing up for various reasons, I made the conscious decision to try to enjoy the little things, take things for what they are, and find the magic in the things I love. Baking is one of my favorite passions, and I truly find it magical. The way the science works in baking is fascinating to me. I want everyone to find their baking, their hope, their magic." 

9. What writing advice do you find totally useless?
"While I can’t think of one specific piece of advice off the top of my head, I will say this: Writing advice is just that. It’s advice, not something anyone needs to listen to. When people offer advice, they are only offering what they find helps them. It’s subjective. You can try new things from advice you’re given or read online, but don’t hold yourself to it and measure your writing or worth to the criteria established by writing advice. It’s really about finding your own style, approach, and process. I only say this because I think we hold writing advice to a high standard a lot of the time, especially when it comes from established writers, but what works for one writer may not work for another. I think good advice to follow is to have fun while writing and to write in a way that doesn’t harm others. That seems like the best rule of thumb to me." 
 
10. And finally, what do you enjoy doing that you don’t talk about enough. Tell me all about it!
"Thank you for such thoughtful questions! I love this. My first thought was to say baking, but I have been talking about that on Instagram forever, so I think I’ll have to say my passion for the Pokemon series. I used to hide my love for it growing up because it wasn’t “cool.” My peers didn’t understand my love for it, and my parents thought it was weird that I was still playing the games as a high schooler. Well, here I am at 24 still enjoying the series! I grew up with it and have adored it since I was a kid, and that sort of attachment doesn’t die just because you’re a little older. Over the last 2 years especially, I have started talking about it more online, which has oddly felt very freeing because it’s something I’m so passionate about."
 
Hear Preston read his poem "spinning wheels are so out of style."

Preston Smith (he/him) is an MA candidate in literature at Wright State University. He is an editor for Periwinkle Literary Journal, and his debut chapbook Red Rover, Red Lover released from Roaring Junior Press in early 2020. He can be found on Twitter (and Instagram!) tweeting about his cats, baking, and fairy tales. His poems appear in Black Bough, Nightingale & Sparrow, and Pink Plastic House, among others.

Carson Sandell is a twenty-one-year-old gay & demisexual poet born in Modesto, CA, but raised in San Jose. He graduated from Mission College, Santa Clara, with an AA-T in English and is currently pursuing a BA in Creative Writing at University of California Riverside. Carson also plans on pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing in the future. Find him on Twitter @SandellCarson and on his website. ​

Ahoy-hoy! Here I’ll post interviews with writers. Why? ‘Cause I interviewed writers long ago and I really miss it. Let me explain. Grab a cuppa! 

In fall of 2017, I transferred to Truman State University. Since I was a creative writing major, I decided to work for the school paper to gain some practical writing experience. I got the job as a Features writer because I wanted to write human-interest stories. I had the privilege to interview a flutist, a podcaster, and a world expert in prairie dogs, but since so many writers came to Truman, I wished to interview them as well. Writers came to conduct workshops, read their work, lecture, and I figured if I could wave a press badge in front of them, I could get them to talk to me. I arranged to interview incoming writers and publish their stories in the school paper (yes, it was a real, physical newspaper that you could pick up on campus every Thursday). Some of my interviews with writers included a bee keeper, a bartender, and a professor. During my two-year stint as an undergrad at Truman, I interviewed a bunch of people and published 40 articles, and that included 15 interviews with writers.

I graduated from Truman in 2019 and my hobby of interviewing writers ended. I never attempted to do it again. I couldn’t imagine chasing down writers I didn’t know, and trying to get them to talk to me. Then while setting up my author page, I thought, what if I just interviewed my friends? I don’t need a venue, the venue is right here. Here is my chance to get to know my friends better and promote their work! Heck yeah. So keep your eyes on this space, peeps! I’ve got interviews with writers coming soon.  

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