Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
Pablo Neruda’s poetry played an important role in my life after I emigrated from Chile to the United States as a child. His poems grounded me to my birthland, serving as a reminder of the strengths and beauty of my roots and culture. This was significant for me as I learned English and learned to navigate a foreign land where I was often the only Chilean-Puerto Rican. Perhaps it is cliché that someone from Chile would list Neruda, yet it is my truth. His poetry expanded my worldview and helped shape my identity in one of the most vulnerable periods of my life when I experienced financial uncertainty and discrimination. I’ll forever be grateful.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
Throughout my life, poetry has comforted me and provided clarity in times of distress. Should my poems offer solace to others, well, I can think of no greater feat. I also hope the emotional truth of my poetry resonates with readers.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
I tend to not approach a poem with an idea of what the final draft will look like. Perhaps, this is because emotions, instinct, and curiosity drive my poetry. I have written poems that are meaningful to me in a few minutes while others have taken several drafts and several months, as well as critical feedback from my poetry group, before being completed.

Do you have a creative routine - a ritual that helps get you in the creative zone?
I used to have a daily ritual and creative routine but that went out the window when I became a mom. I have no regrets about motherhood as my young daughter is now my muse (and sitting on my lap as I attempt to type out these responses). These days, I tend to write whenever I can—even if it’s a few lines on my phone or notebook before going to bed. When I do have a chunk of time, I revisit these lines and expand upon them. If I'm uninspired, I read poems from my creative ancestors and contemporaries. That usually gets me flowing.

What surprising reactions have you gotten to your work?
People familiar with my poetry can tell when they’ve read one of my poems even when the poem doesn’t have my name attached. At least I’ve been told this by my poetry group. I am pleased with this feedback as I have intentionally created and cultivated a speaker for my poetry.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
Linda Collins is a writer from New Zealand that wrote Loss Adjustment, one of the most important memoirs I have ever read which explores the grief of a parent who has lost a daughter to suicide. She is also a fantastic poet, forging her own path. Her debut book of poetry, Sign Language for the Death of Reason is her poetic response to her memoir.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
I was deeply changed by reading E.M Forster's A Room with a View and seeing the film adaptation of it. I still force it upon my students every year. But my first and always poet is Walt Whitman. I’m still assuming what he assumes, and I still long to be undisguised and naked in the woods, mad to be in contact with it. Whenever I build a bit of steam in my poetic voice, as in “Ode to the Vector,” I can feel the spirit of Walt inhabiting me.

When did you first realize you wanted to be an author/artist?
I’m still realizing it and still uncertain about it. I came late to poetry, about 10 years ago, and I’ve learned with Ada Limon that the more you speak your fears and throw them out to the sky, the more freely you can move in the world, and I’ve learned with Audre Lorde that your silences will not save you. I’ve learned the joy and felt love of being in a room where people can share their truth in words. I love the quiet silence of making poetry and the community of sharing. But I think it is important to love the process of making and sharing more than the “having had written” of being an author. So I still have some discomfort in thinking about myself that way.

What word do you feel should be brought back into popular usage?
I like the word groovy, though I am embarrassed to use it, and I realize that much of its usage was silly and adolescent. Maybe it is because my favorite song as a kid was the “59th Street Song” by Simon and Garfunkel. I love the way it sounds and I kind of love the whole idea of a groove. I wish I was brave enough to say it more and not mind feeling stupid. I also have grown to like the word “love.” People are afraid to trivialize it, as if it were not a thing that could stand everyday use. Or they worry about being sappy and sentimental, but I have been working on saying it to friends and letting it shape my words to kindness. Simone Weil thought that there were certain words like Love or Justice that connect up with primordial ideas and resonate in a special way in us. I like using the word in my poetry, but perhaps that is because I am sappy and sentimental, and, well, groovy.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
I work quickly. I hold an idea in my mind for a day or so in my head trying out phrases and images, and I sit down when a first line or title or volta come to me. I love the “write a poem a day” for 30 days challenges and spend no more than 30 or so minutes letting a draft come out, then a few minutes bending it into shape, removing words, and making the sound and meter flow and replacing tired words or images. I can let it sit a few days and come back to it and see what it feels like with a bit of distance and tinker a bit. I have benefitted from workshops and editors who force me to rework a poem, but it is not natural to me. I’m sure I’m just not as good a poet as those that I hear about working on poems through many many drafts over years. I tend to just write a new poem and forget one that isn’t working.

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down?
I’ll often put down a book and move on to something else, especially in the summer where I am reading for pure joy and distraction. I’m embarrassed to say I stopped reading The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, despite its being beautifully written because the number of characters and time shifts were asking more attention of me than I wanted to give. I’m sure I’ll go back to it when I am more in the mood for it. I’m also embarrassed to say that I browse poetry books rather than reading them cover to cover. I know that poets agonize over the ordering and arrangement of their volumes, but I love opening at random paging and discovering little gems, feeling free to pass some over and get back to them. I usually eventually get to all of them, but I love the adventure of browsing. I have to read so many books systematically and carefully for my work, so the things that bring me joy I like to approach with a bit more Freedom.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevesky is my favorite book. I’ve read it far more times than I can remember and I still find fresh insights. For poets, I think the work of the French Philosopher and mystic, Simone Weil, is a treasure trove of ideas and phrases and ways of seeing the world. Her book Gravity and Grace has ideas for poems on every page in her aphoristic and elliptical style. You may remember Leonard Cohen’s version but “Time’s violence rends the soul; by the rent eternity enters” was the original and is just one of the gems in that book.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape your stories.
Thomas Hardy is a truly great poet, but I think I am more influenced by a trick I see him using often in his novels. He frames a scene the way a cinematographer, seeing it from a distance with an objective eyes, two lone figures holding hands following a thin path through the heather, and then zooms in to their words and then subtle details of their bodies or faces and slowly we see how this scene is part of a bigger drama in the wide world, ready to zoom out again. I’ve always thought of this trick since I write poems about abstract ideas that zoom into the way they live in concrete situations.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
The first author who broadened my views was the iconic Canadian Margaret Atwood. During a Canadian Literature course I read her book The Edible Woman and eventually her ever popular The Handmaid's Tale. Even her short stories or poetry collections were poignant to me. The graceful balance of word, satire, themes, ability to write role reversals, heroines and to design worlds that envision social constructs, weapons and the problem of power: who has it and who does not, opened my eyes to a different perspective that to this day, still steers my views. Much later I got to have a brief Twitter chat with her about 'fascinator hats' that was purely fun.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
If you look at an image of mine, I hope you have to do a double-take because what you see is not immediately evident. We do it when we see a fascinator hat. I love whimsy, mixed with childishness, layered with darkness and unexpected elements of hope. Zoetic Press (Non Binary Review) accepted an image of mine for Issue #27 'Shared Worlds' called 'Take My Hand'. It was inspired by Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay and a Mother's Will to Survive, written by Stephanie Land. 'Take My Hand' is a good example of what I try to visually create. I hope people take away a different interpretation about society and about how it packages our views to fit a certain narrative. I want to question the narrative with imagery. It's like, if my photograph was a fascinator hat: you'd wonder why..., just why you should even wear it..., but when you put it on you feel the urge to confidently cock it a tad off to the side, just enough to give it sass because you want someone else to figure out why you're wearing it that way. To me, that's a great final image.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
When I strike a balance between the challenge of creating a visual art piece and seeing it complete, there is a rhythm to it that sometimes takes minutes and sometimes takes days. I love to shoot images with the intent of layering them and quite often there may be three or four digital images layered together before I feel in sync with it. It absorbs my focus the way living between bright and dull experiences alter one's creative bursts. I know when an image is finished when it morphs into something I didn't even envision. I like to call them 'happy accidents'.

What surprising reactions have you gotten to your work?
I do get surprising reactions to my work. Those reactions greatly vary as one would expect with visual art photography. Everything is up for interpretation. I've been called 'sublime' and 'whimsical'. That surprised me, mostly because more times than not pieces are rejected for not fitting the path a publication is taking with the written words they've accepted. Sometimes I can't give away my images for free, but I'm not surprised by that.

Do you have a creative routine - a ritual that helps get you in the creative zone?
I don't have a creative routine. I think if I needed a routine, I wouldn't be creative. Routine sounds too rigid and counterproductive, so let' go with caffeine. I think my creative process starts with caffeine, cream and two spoonfuls of Stevia.

What’s the last book you didn’t finish reading, and why did you put it down?
The last book I read but didn't finish was one I began at the start of the pandemic. It's called A New Earth; Awakening to your Life's Purpose by Eckhart Tolle. Nothing stopped my desire to read more than a self-help book during a pandemic. I was not receptive to any evolutionary transformation or the perceived consciousness of transformative power coming from one of Oprah's Book Club selections during these two years of lockdowns. Being present and sharing or enjoying time with family, became far more important to me. It was an opportunity to rest in those moment of personal connection, despite the fact that my Canadian government mandated how many people could be in my home and how many people I could be outside with. Kids couldn't even use parks. All our restaurants, theatres and sports venues were closed. We were being conditioned to retreat. While my country legislated us to socially distance, to not be allowed to visit our elderly, to force our family members in hospital to die alone, while we all were required to wear masks, line up for the 'jab' or lose our jobs and even not be permitted to attend our own spouses funeral if we were not vaccinated, I was determined to reach out more. I began making more phone calls and mailing old-fashioned letters to friends. I responded by choosing to be more creative, more outgoing and more caring than I was at the start of the pandemic. I think I came out of my shell a bit. However, having the worst name one could have during a pandemic made that extra fun. I've been silenced. But two years ago, if I was asked to answer questions, I probably would not have done it. Today, I'm thankful for the chance. I'm grateful to those in the creative arts and publishing profession, because they were financially hit hard by the pandemic and yet it was them who got us through it. Maybe I am more awake to my life's purpose after all.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
Absolutely. I minored in creative writing in college because I knew otherwise, I wouldn’t have written at all. Taking the minor forced me to make time to write. Now that I work full-time, I’m even more intentional about making time to write. My current company really cares about work-life balance. That was a major factor in my accepting my current job. I’ve resisted going into specific industries (tech, for example) because they have reputations of deprioritizing work-life balance. That doesn’t work for me. If I don’t have time to be creative, I don’t feel fulfilled. I need it in the same way I need to sleep.

I’m a very bad binge-watcher and, notoriously among my friends, often drop TV shows midway. I’m very selective about what media I become invested in because I’m really conscious about how I spend my time. Oftentimes, on the weekends, I’ll use browser extensions to block social media sites. I can become easily distracted and caught in infinite scroll loops. If I’m spending time on social media, or watching TV, or reading a book, I want it to be intentional, not habitual. So I’m behind the zeitgeist a little bit.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
I scope my work small: the lead-up or aftermath of a specific event, an exploration of one character’s relationship with a specific emotion, a series of conversations between two characters circling around (but never touching) one topic, and so on. These are the moments I find most revealing, and most fascinating. I want readers to use these moments to reflect on themselves. Consider interactions they’ve had that might mirror my stories, and ask what vital moments in their lives look deceptively small from the outside.

I think a lot about negative space in my work. What am I choosing to leave out? What am I implying but never saying? What concepts do characters dance around but are too afraid to touch? How does this conversation act as a proxy for something much larger? I joke that even when I don’t mean to, I’m writing about grief. I think grief is one of the most profound and human things a person can feel. If my work helps others access or understand their grief, really think about their own emotional interiority, then I’ve succeeded.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
It certainly varies by piece. I save everything. I have a folder in my Notes app called “writing scraps” where I write down snippets that pop into my head, scenes, even specific lines of dialogue. I regularly mine that folder for ideas. Those notes can sit for months or years. Sometimes, future you needs to be the one to write that story.

How a work looks in my head is rarely what the final work ends up being. I’m a revision-heavy writer; the hardest part for me is getting that first draft done. So, I let that draft be as wild or messy as it needs to be, and rarely stop to review what I’ve written until the draft is basically complete. Most of my stories start from those scraps, so that’s the scene I start with. Oftentimes, that initial scene never makes it in the final draft. My drafting process feels much more like a conversations with my characters. I may want them to make up from an argument, for example, but by the time I write the argument, I realize that they want to stay angry. That’s a sign to me to rethink the direction of the piece, or rethink the path that led me to that inescapable moment.

It takes me a few weeks to draft. I try to aim to get a draft done within a month of starting, or otherwise it’ll languish in my WIP folder. Then, I have to put it away for a few months. I find that I can’t objectively revise without some distance from the initial draft. Sometimes, I’ll send the draft off to other writer friends and get their feedback. Then, in about three months, I’ll sit down with my notes and all of their critique, read through the whole draft, and begin the revision process. I find this allows me to be more objective. I’m less emotionally attached to scenes, specific sentences, or certain imagery when I’ve had a break from the work. My drafts frequently wander. I need to be somewhat cutthroat about trimming the fat. That revision process occurs over a few weeks. I’ll return to the piece several times after the first revision, but at that point, it needs to get in front of people. I find I’m never really done revising until publication.

Do you have a creative routine - a ritual that helps get you in the creative zone?
I’m a morning person. My brain starts to shut off when the sun goes down and it becomes very difficult to concentrate on anything important. I write in the mornings before I log onto work. I’ll get up early, make a cup of coffee, and sit down at my desk in front of my computer. I always write on my mechanical keyboard, as opposed to a laptop. There’s something about the sound and feel of mechanical keys that makes me feel more confident and authoritative in my writing. I’ll turn the overhead lights off and open all the windows so the room only has natural light. That puts me in a great headspace to concentrate on my current piece.

I tend to concentrate in bursts, so at most I’ll write for an hour. Consistency and routine work better for me than writing binge sessions. When I’m drafting, it’s always the same goal: just write a page. The quality of the page doesn’t matter. Starting is the hardest part for me, and often when I get to the end of my page, I’m in enough of a rhythm that I keep going for 30min to an hour.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
A few years ago, a friend introduced me to David Rakoff’s body of work. I wouldn’t call him underrated (he was an occasional NPR contributor and certainly had a lot of support from other essayists and writers), but he’s not a household name in the way David Sedaris can be. I’m a big fan of personal essays; I love his voice. I think it’s sardonic and insightful and hilarious in a way that I can’t get enough of.

I also really love Hanif Willis-Abdurraquib. He’s an incredibly talented poet and writer. His essay collection They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us blew me away. If you’re looking for an entry point with him, I always show people the video of him reading his poem, “And What Good Will Your Vanity Be When The Rapture Comes?” That may be my favorite poem.

What surprising reactions have you gotten to your work?
I once had feedback in a critique that my stories are very well “choreographed.” I’ve thought about that for years. I grew up dancing (ballet, mostly) and I loved the use of that word to talk about writing. You might be sensing a theme here, but something I really value is intentionality. I’m a big fan of 90-minute movies, because you get the sense that the director didn’t waste a second of time. I’m in awe of work that is exactly as long as it needs to be.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
I’m a graphic designer by trade, and that certainly influences the way I write. We don’t think about books as visual mediums, but the way we structure words on a page matters. The layout of a page, our use of italics, where we place our dialogue tags in a sentences, all of that affects pacing. I spend a lot of time at work formatting large blocks of text that other people have written. I need to make a text visually engaging without changing a word. That has a massive impact on the way I think about my own writing. I’m not just thinking of narrative; I’m thinking about literal structure.

In college, I used to bind books. We had a letterpress machine with manual type blocks. You could physically pick up blocks and rearrange them. You could hold two letter A’s next to each other in two different fonts and see how one takes up less space on the page. It’s fascinating. Around this time, I was introduced to Warren Lehrer’s body of work. He’s a designer and artist who publishes highly visual books. Text falls off the page, it interrupts other lines of text, it weaves in and out of each other as two characters are conversing. I’m very inspired by his work. It gets me thinking about all of these questions, all the ancillary details that make a story sing. It pushes me to change up my traditional understanding of how stories are structured. Why can’t a story be a list? Why can’t it be a series of locations?

Lehrer’s work is very intentional. You can tell that he thought over each composition in his books. He’s breaking a lot of traditional formatting rules, but it’s always for a reason. That influences me too. If you’re going to break an expectation, know why you’re doing it. Novelty only gets you so far.

When did you first realize you wanted to be an author/artist? 
I think everyone knew I was going to be a writer before I did. I entered college intending to be a veterinarian, and didn’t realize I wanted to pursue an English degree until my second year. I had received recognition for my writing in high school, but always considered it more of a hobby. I’ve never felt more excited than when I realized I could just take all my classes in the English building and write all the time. It felt like I could finally stop swimming upstream and just follow my instincts.

What is the single best sentence you've ever read? 
Sourced from my grandma, my favorite Ogden Nash poem– “In the world of mules, there are no rules.” Nash creates endless possibilities in the most concise line I’ve ever seen. It completely eclipses “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

What is your most evocative memory?
I briefly worked at a doggie daycare last spring. An insider fact about doggie daycare: the dogs move in a roiling tide and often behave unpredictably. The cataclysm that forced me to quit was particularly a nasty altercation between two dogs–imagine you are dragging two vicious dogs apart by their collars, unable to call for help on the walkie-talkie. A deafening pack of giant dogs is also jumping on your knees, trying to take you to the ground. If you end up on the ground, you’re done for. I ended up with a dog bite, a trip to the emergency room, and no job.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece? 
In previous years, I would write a poem and immediately call it finished. This is possible, but rarely actually happens for me. However–learning the concept of radical revisions from Rachel Zucker completely changed my outlook on writing. Now, I return to old poems and revise them with fresh eyes. Closing the gap between a first and final draft is a continuous task. I don’t ever consider a poem “finished,” but rather undergoing the process of becoming more honest.

What historical time would you most like to live in? 
The Jurassic Period. I’m speedy, scrappy, and I like dinosaurs.

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down? 
Admittedly, it was Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. The plot took too long to kick into gear and I never felt immersed in the setting. I know. She won the Nobel Prize. I feel shame for this.

What does your creative process look like?
Writing a poem feels like puzzling out a Rubik’s Cube. I delete and rewrite everything as I go, and constantly second-guess myself. It seems like as soon as I’ve gotten one side of the Rubik’s Cube to be all one color, I have to destroy it in service of the whole cube. It’s nerve-wracking, honestly. For me, poems rarely come out as naturally as I want them to read. That’s one thing I’m afraid of. That wasn't part of the question, but there it is.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
Not at all. I take dictation from the muse then, if I'm lucky, accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative while editing. There is nothing else that I would rather be doing at that time. Of course, it helps that I'm retired and don't have to earn a living.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
Lars Ahlfors, whose textbook on Complex Analysis features an axiomatic and geometric approach to the study of functions of a complex variables and is so well written it may be considered a work of literature.

When did you first realize you wanted to be an author/artist?
I find this question interesting because I don't regard myself as such and don't know that I wish to. What I want to continue being is a lyric (pure) mathematician with a penchant for going boldly where none have gone before, earthly treasures be damned. I do remember that I wrote my first sophomoric poem the morning after the major in the bed next to mine in the Brooke Army Medical center died, and there was an interminable discussion of the time of death.

What is the single best sentence you've ever read?
Every sentence in Dostoevsky's The Idiot is tied for first. I hang on every word of the book because my life is the perfect parallel of Prince Myshkin's (except for my not yet being a prince). And then something happened which surprised us all.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
I'm not a refiner of individual poems. Whenever a new butterfly appears I'm inclined to run after it, and leave to lie around whatever wants to lie around. Sometimes in my haste I step on what I had been writing and break it, but I'm willing to run that risk. I do think that I learn something every time I'm allowed to spend a few minutes with a poem and that this makes me increasingly sure-footed when approaching the new.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
When I was young, characters spoke to me. I scribbled their whispered lives onto scraps shoved in junk drawers or hidden in the velvety bottom of my mother’s pleather bag. Rarely did the lines in my blank books fill with color; rather, tales inked the margins. Once, with no canvas around, I covered the white stucco of my bedroom closet with the story of a man who, every spring, buried nothing but hot pepper seeds in his little backyard bed yet always sprouted sweet tomatoes anyway. I got the spoon for that one. She gave it to me good, my mother, who must have just seen the mess, not the words. I put them to page much more often, then — words — when I was a child. But with growing up comes responsibility, and responsibility too often snuffs creativity. Sadly, reality. I traded my pretend friends for students, a spouse, children of my own. I liked to think they took a vacation, went on holiday. For nearly two decades. Then, while I sat in my cell called home for who knows how many canary yo-yo string pulls up in a row, I heard them. Again. The four grey-lathered corners over and over and over must have lured them back. Here. The repeat ends and my crown flirts with down, which is usually when their breaths pull my frame from its flat and fitted embrace.

What is the single best sentence you've ever read?
“The young don’t have a monopoly on broken hearts, you know.” The Last Letter from Your Lover, Jo Jo Moyes.

The answer to this question certainly changes with life’s circumstance. I recently finished The Reading List, for book club. Oh, Mukesh. I love him. Not so much because he is him, but because he reminds me of my mother. I think maybe all our favorite characters are our favorites for this reason. Because they touch us in a way only one other person can. The familiarity sticks well after the spine closes for good. In the book, Mukesh is two years widowed, and we get a glimpse of a part of life not often shown. When we becomes me, as Adams puts it. Other chapters in married life are written about or are filmed regularly, like courtship, vows, infidelity, parenthood. Even death. It is the after which gets glossed over. Or omitted altogether. In August 2021, my father passed away, suddenly. My mother was left a 69-year-old widow. I, her only child, have spent the last fifteen months helping her not only to cope with this loss but also to see this seventh decade of her life is not its last chapter, but is rather its next chapter.

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down?
I belong to two book clubs. One meets on the third Thursday of each month, and members are stay-at-home moms in my community. The other meets monthly at the local public library, and I am its youngest member by nearly three decades. My mother is its second youngest member, and she is twenty-seven years my senior. They are a fun group of women, though — and, with the name Beverly, I guess I fit right in! Going on two years ago, while discussions were held via Zoom, the librarian in charge asked all of us to name our favorite book of all time. Childhood page-turner? The Indian in the Cupboard. Teenage read? To Kill a Mockingbird. To teach? The Crucible. “Me time” pleasure? The Kite Runner. I went with this last one. Most other answers from the squares on screen I had read. One, I had not. Bel Canto. I ordered it the next day and cracked it open as soon as it dropped on my front step. But about two, maybe three, chapters in, I was bored. Perhaps it was the dialogue. Could have been the climate of the time; it was in the middle of COVID isolation, after all. Regardless, I never did finish Patchett’s story.

What historical time would you most like to live in?
A woman might very well consider any era prior to her own less than desirable. When she was orphaned at fifteen, my Nonna was forced, by her older brothers, to drop out of ninth grade. To help contribute to the household, she worked at a hair salon as a sweeper and then as a shampoo girl. She attended beauty school at night and worked her way up to stylist. She met my grandfather in her early twenties, and they were married less than a year later. Theirs was a small family at that time, with four daughters in nine years — all of whom she saw through college. My Nonna often told me her dream was to attend Kent State University to become a journalist; in junior high, she wrote for the school newspaper and won an award for one of her articles. She was so proud of that commendation, reading the letter to me if once, then dozens of times. I only now grasp the magnitude of that award, as her first — and only. To want to live in a time when or a place where my husband is not one of my many options would be an insult to my Nonna, who sacrificed much for me to be able to choose him every day. Oh, what I would not give for her to orate that type for me just one more time…

What is your most evocative memory?
I taught myself to read. Or maybe Strawberry Shortcake did. I would plug in my 1980 Strawberry Shortcake Playtime Phonograph Record Player and cheek into the little tan armchair (complete with footstool) in one corner of my room on Tinkers View Drive. Opened the metal clasp and flipped up the red briefcase-type lid to expose the Peculiar Purple Pie Man, along with Strawberry and her spectrum of friends. Some smells are unmistakable. Coffee. Fresh mulch. Peanut butter. Skunk. The sugary smell which lived under that lid sits with me still. The hiss of stylus to vinyl would let me know the story was about to begin. My pink-tipped pointer would chase the letters dug into the bottom of each page, and then a ding would signal the time to turn. Until the tale was done.

What does your creative process look like?
I walk. On trails inside Cuyahoga Valley National Park; between the stones which live in Lake View Cemetery; along the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath; really, anywhere Northeast Ohio provides. I visit. Old mansions, museums, local tours, sites “to see” in my own hometown. I eat. In cafes and diners and pubs and shops which sit in the shadow of green metal rectangles that name pavement, and in others that hug the shore of our great lake up North. In some, I am Norm or Cliff; but in most, nobody knows my name. I talk. To any mop willing, the more opposite myself the better. One of my high school English teachers said writers write what they know. Ugh, how dull! Especially when most soles fail to go far beyond the blades in their own backyards. Well, if what Mr. Monteith or Ms. Porcello or Mrs. DiFranco (not sure which one, now) said is true, then I choose to give a nod to as many of the 380-750 waves as I cannot simply those most like my own. Every day, I try to chess myself in spots most likely to produce a forcing move. Why? Because to take squares as before renders the same hue. And, I write. With a pen, on paper, in a coil-sided fan that hides in my bag at all times. No keys and cords and disks for me. Not until the end, at least. Most do not know the heart lives in the ditch the pen tip digs. So those strokes which bleed to the next sheet play encore on the screen.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
The short answer is that creativity is always in my life — I’ve always been flexible with how and when I write. I’ve found that it doesn’t matter too much whether I'm very busy or less so, as I write poems whenever they emerge — in fragments or in wholes.

When did you first realize you wanted to be an author/artist?
I’ve known the appeal of words since I started reading, but when I started to write poems in fifth grade, I opened the gates to a world of self-created literature. My beginnings in poetry actually came right before one of the lowest moments in my life, and it helped me stay afloat, well, until now, but especially during difficult times when I could express myself and get things off my chest. As I began writing more, I realized its multitudes of possibilities — a creative release, a communal art, a portrait of what it means to be human. Writing is magical and poetry is arguably its most concentrated, enchanting form.

What word do you feel should be brought back into popular usage?
This is an interesting question — honestly, I could mention words like “betwixt" and “thither," but I think the linguistic style as a whole of older eras is beautiful and should be used more unironically. I find myself literally thinking in older English after I read novels like Clarissa or Robinson Crusoe and wonder what the reaction would be if I wrote to my school teachers in that style.

What is your most evocative memory?
I have so many, and most of them hit me when I'm walking around my town or about to fall asleep. I don’t go on the subway (I'm based in NYC) often nowadays because of anti-Asian violence, but a big set of memories I often think about, wistfully and sadly, is from middle school years before the pandemic when I rode the train around, alone and people-watching.

What historical time would you most like to live in?
I’d likely be persecuted more than I am now in any time period previous to mine. But I’d appreciate 1950s France, and the flourishing of post-war French literature: I’d love to have coffee with Camus, have a drink with de Beauvoir and Sartre, visit Colette before her death, meet Foucault before his literary career, and chat with Ionesco, Éluard, among others.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Korean-American author, artist, performer, videographer… She is incredible and has been on the come up, decades after her murder. I’ve been doing a lot of literary analysis and research around her and particularly her work DICTEE. Recently she has been part of the 2022 Whitney Biennial exhibit, and I visited the first week of August. It was amazing seeing her work in person.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape your stories.
Lee Isaac Chung's Minari is a brilliant film that captures the complexity of relationships and tensions between human and nature, and between humans themselves. In the last year, I’ve been incorporating more elements of nature into my work, and these relationships, personified or not, fascinate me.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
Not so much a tradeoff as in a sacrifice, but that because of privilege (no debt, parental help, general good health) I’ve been able to live very cheaply. In this way, I’ve compromised making money/having an established non-writing career so that I could focus my time on writing instead. In many respects, this isn’t so much a tradeoff as a gift, I think.

When did you first realize you wanted to be an author/artist?
Consciously, this was in 8th grade when I applied to go to a magnet school for English. I knew it would involve writing of all kinds, and I was interested in that. I suppose it was maybe two years into that program when I decided I wanted to be an author regardless of what my “main” profession would be. (I don’t remember writing anything before that time, but my mom has evidence somewhere that I did.) It wasn’t until the middle of college that I focused on writing as being my career goal, even if that has ended up taking on other jobs to support that career (see the tradeoffs question for more context there).

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
I tend to not be imagining the piece beforehand. A piece evolves into being as I write it, which mostly means that when I’m done writing a piece it is the way I envisioned it. This is mostly a problem for revision, since it then takes time to distance myself from that vision-during-creation so I can see the work with new eyes. And sometimes those new eyes see flaws (although, rarely, they find the work is exactly how I wanted it). I have had some stories in process for ten years? I most always think that the current version is real and finished, until I discover, in re-reading, that I was wrong.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
Robert Aickman. I say this mostly because I found out about him in the last few years in a way so random or circuitous that I can’t remember. He’s had beautiful collections of his short stories (and few novels) by Faber & Faber, so he’s obviously not forgotten, but most people I tell about him weren’t familiar with him beforehand. His stories are wonderfully oblique and almost quotidian in their horror and I love them all.

Whose work do you feel most resembles your own?
This is sidestepping the question, but ever since I discovered Robert Aickman I have felt a strong kinship with what he was attempting in his writing, and so I’ve been striving to resemble/recreate/incorporate what he manages in my stories. It is just a good and necessary feeling (to me) to see another person’s writing that I admire and recognize, Yes, that is what I’m trying to do.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape your stories.
I have two answers here: Angel Heart and The Thin Red Line. I cite Angel Heart because of how the main character is always in the dark, even if they don’t know that, and their search for knowledge becomes self-knowledge that they never wanted. That’s often the plot I’m driving for in my own work. With The Thin Red Line I’m influenced by how the narrative wallows in the beauty of the world even in the midst of horror, and how the two conflate.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
Yes, it’s always a struggle to make time for writing and artmaking. I work as an English professor, but my teaching is focused on professional writing and rhetoric. In addition to teaching, I have research and service expectations, so all that typically keeps me very busy. When I have time to write creatively, it’s usually at night when I’m winding down for the day.

When did you first realize you wanted to be an author/artist?
I think I’ve always wanted to be a writer. On “career day” in first grade, I told my class I wanted to be an author. As a kid, I put together a few children’s books and wrote/illustrated poetry. As I got older, I started writing more prose (mostly fiction but also some personal essays). Somewhere along the way, I decided I wanted to be a physician, so I majored in biology in college with plans to attend medical school, but I couldn’t stay away from writing for long. The last year of undergrad, I transitioned to English and took seven classes per semester (plus four summer school classes) to graduate on time. I started my master’s degree in creative writing two weeks later.

What is your most evocative memory?
When I was a senior in high school, I was in an internship program for students interested in the medical field. As part of the internship program, I worked in various clinical and hospital settings, including the emergency room, surgery, radiology, and labor and delivery. When I was on the labor and delivery floor, I assisted with several births, and helping these women bring their babies into the world was incredible and transformative. I’m currently working on a collection of poems (tentatively titled Intern Year) about my experiences in that internship program. You can read some of those poems here.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
I’m a perfectionist and an overthinker, so it typically takes me way too long to consider a poem “finished.” Last summer, I spent quite a bit of time working on the Intern Year project, and a single poem about the labor and delivery experience took me over a month to polish. However, I recently wrote an Intern Year poem about my rotation in the intensive care unit and that one came together in just a couple days. I always appreciate how organic those quick poems feel/sound.

What’s the last book you didn’t finish reading, and why did you put it down?
I recently started reading TJ Klune’s Under the Whispering Door. I’m about 100 pages in and keep putting it down and picking it back up. I’ll probably end up finishing it, but I think I’m struggling because I recently read Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library and the books are very similar (in both books, the main character has died and is navigating the afterlife).

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
I recently found Michael McGriff’s Home Burial at my local library and really enjoyed it. As someone who was born in the Midwest (Indiana) and has only lived in other areas of the Midwest (Iowa, Ohio, and back to Indiana), I appreciate how these poems craft a portrait of rural life and communities.

Additionally, I’d love to give a shoutout to Hillary McCullough, the artist who created the cover art for my recent book, Hematology. You can see her beautiful cover art here or view more of her photography here.

I’m also the Art Editor at Mud Season Review, and we have the opportunity to publish some really incredible artwork and writing. You can check out issues of MSR here.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
I began writing and publishing at the age of sixteen. I started with poetry and graduated to novels and plays. Lack of sleep was one trade off. I gave up writing 4 years ago and took up painting, which is much more relaxing and less detrimental to my mental well-being.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
The first author of my childhood days to broaden my view of the world has to be Herge with his adventures of Tintin, which took me to places in the world I had never heard of.

When did you first realize you wanted to be an author/artist?
I was guided to write because of my mother's stories, which were never ending. Growing up in Belgium without TV, internet, phone or cars, people spoke to one another in person and they had stories to tell. They had lived dramatic lives because of the world wars and so on. So writing was something I fell into naturally. I began painting late in life when I was 72, but I had always drawn something. I've been painting for four years now and have published in over seventy magazines.

What is the single best sentence you've ever read?
There is no single best sentence I can think of, but a good one is "Zero is better than nothing."

What is your most evocative memory?
My most evocative memory takes place on a bus on the way to Mobile, Alabama, when I was unemployed in 1975. I sat next to an elderly Black woman and we spoke about the world and my not having a job. She was on her way to New Orleans. She got off the bus to make a connection and as she got off she handed me a newspaper and told me to make sure to read the comics. The bus took off and I turned the pages. A twenty dollar bill fell on my lap. This memory will forever live with me. The incident became a poem, "She got on the bus in Baltimore" and was published in the Oklahoma Review.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
Time isn't a concept I deal with when writing or painting. For me there is no imagination because imagining is all so real.

What historical time would you most like to live in?
I would love to live at the end of the nineteenth century to get away from all this modern crap that is making people ignorant. Soon people won't be able to write or think.

Whose work do you feel most resembles your own?
I don't write or paint like anyone and no one does what I do. My writing has been in my own style, and that is why I never became "commercial." Several painters have influenced me as well as naturalists. Bosch, Delveaux, Magritte, Dali, Miro, Chirico, Audubon and others.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
I have the good fortune to be coming closer to a time when I can I will not need to be worrying about my day job any longer, so my weekends and nights can start to spread to a more prominent feature of my life. Until then I continue to natch up little bits of poetic thought here and there and cache them away like a magpie.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
I read voraciously as a child and don't remember who was first back then. I wrote little plays in grade school, nonsense stories in high school, and in college took a poetry course where we read Virgil and Dryden and Milton and tried writing in different forms. Those assignments led to the first real verse of mine.

When did you first realize you wanted to be an author/artist?
It has been gradual, this idea of making a shift. My job is a technical one, much in demand but not an essential part of my soul, I have come to see. Over the last three years I have been working at understanding what a life centered around art might be like.

What word do you feel should be brought back into popular usage?
When I look at what is happening in the world I wonder why it is that you never hear much of that old adage "There but for the grace of God go I." With few exceptions the privileged find it impossible to contemplate being anything other than eternally privileged because of their accident of birth or circumstance. A dose of HUMILITY might do wonders.

What is your most evocative memory?
My earliest memory is of watching the funeral procession of John F. Kennedy on a black and white television in our old apartment. I was too young to understand what it meant, but I know that afterward I had a sense that the world was in peril, that everything could be ruined in an hour.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
I don't know if I can recognize when a piece is really finished. It can be a surprise to find out something I cobbled together actually does possess objective worth of some type.

What historical time would you most like to live in?
As a child I had an almanac that included their estimates of future technological breakthrough dates. They had the feeling that by 2050 the understanding of mortality would result in a way to achieve immortality, and I remember hoping I could live to see this and maybe benefit from it. I don't want to go to past eras which are often viewed by us with unrealistically romantic ideas.

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down?
Seven Blades in Black by Sam Sykes. I read most of this novel but did not see why I would continue reading about such unpleasant and unreflective characters with unfathomable motivations.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
It seems to me as though Fernando Pessoa is still unfamiliar to most of us in the US but that might be changing.

Whose work do you feel most resembles your own?
It's more the other way around. There are poets I find easier to use as models to come up with my own work: Billy Collins, John Ashbery, Gertrude Stein, Pablo Neruda. But the longest lasting influences have been the great haiku poets: Basho, Buson, Issa.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape your stories.
On Flickr the Lost Places group and others like it have informed some of my pieces. https://www.flickr.com/groups/lostplaces/

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
I'd say the biggest trade off I make for creative work is sleep. I'm a freelance writer, freelance editor and a ghost writer, and I have a family - so if I'm going to work on fiction it's got to be at the expense of sleep. But I'm terrible at night, so I often get up at 5 a.m. to get a few hundred words in.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
I've always been a big reader and I still think of images from the first novel I read, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. But in terms of tweaking my brain, it has to be Alice Munro. When I started reading her, I was blown away and relieved by how such ordinary situations could be made into art.

When did you first realize you wanted to be an author/artist?
I've always known that I would be in the arts in some way. My parents used to give me empty notebooks each summer for me to fill up with stories. I was a theatre/choir/band kid in high school. After freelancing for a few years, I became a magazine editor. I just love making things. In my career, I haven't always been making exactly what I want to, but I've been very lucky to support myself in creative arenas. Okay, there's been a bit of waitressing in the mix, but I think that's an essential gig for any artist.

What word do you feel should be brought back into popular usage?
Swell.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
I don't think I ever close the gap between what I imagine a work to be - or what I want to convey - and the final product. In a way, I think that's as it should be. If you're open to allowing your story to be its own creature, it will almost always end up being quite different from what you imagined initially.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape your stories.
Indie filmmaking of the 80s and 90s had and has a big impact on me. Jim Jarmusch, Gus Vant Sant, Whit Stillman, Todd Haynes, Hal Hartley (ugh, this list is so white and male!) - all making small moments into art, with great style.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
Yes! I sleep less, but I sleep deeply. I have 3 year old twins, so I usually doze off when I make them sleep. Then I wake up fresh after 4 AM, ready to spear the page with my pen.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
Gerard Manley Hopkins. Although I’m not a big believer in God, Hopkins’ unusual use of language in God’s Grandeur made me look at nature differently. “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”

Who do you think is the most misunderstood historical figure?
I’d say Sita, from the Ramayana. She had to stay within a line her brother-in-law drew, while her husband and he went out in the forest where they stayed. I was teaching a chapter from the Ramayana to girls in the fourth grade, and one asked me, “Why is Sita so passive?”

I had no answer. I asked all my teachers when I met them. Finally my first principal’s husband gave the answer. “She crossed the line.” She was a rebel. But she is highlighted as being the ideal wife, her rebellion is glossed over.

What word do you feel should be brought back into popular usage?
Twattle or gossip. It echoes prattle and while gossip seems frivolous, it diverts us and are the daily stories spicing our life.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
A sense of what it is to be a woman, to be Indian. How our identity and culture clash with our duties.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
A week. Something inspires me, and I write it down. Give it a day to rest, and then edit it. Then I get a critique done. After that I revise it - that’s when the poem can truly spread its wings.

Do you have a creative routine - a ritual that helps get you in the creative zone?
I try to read a poem when I get up. Then I do daily journaling, but I aim to do it in verse. Sometimes I come up with an arresting metaphor, that I can use in a poem.

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down?
Tomb of Sand. I was excited a novel translated from Hindi won the International Booker Prize, so I began reading it. The language seemed stilted, so I abandoned it.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
Vandana Khanna is a poet who humanizes women in Indian mythology powerfully.

What surprising reactions have you gotten to your work?
“How did you imagine the gods slingshotting us?” Or “I would never have thought of Apollo and Dhanwantri discussing Corona.”

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
I actually wrote a poem inspired by a film called Ludo, which shows God playing a game called ludo, with humans as counters.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
I grew up in a family where reading and the arts weren’t seen as priorities. My first go at college was at Purdue Calumet in Hammond, Indiana. I was hanging around the library and randomly came across Dostoevsky’s The Brother’s Karamazov. It took me a couple tries to actually finish it, but it really did a number on me. Dostoevsky broadened my worldview in the sense that he showed me people more than a hundred years had a lot of the same existential thoughts I did. But more so than that, all of his works showed me that you can make a highly philosophical drama out of the lives of working-class people. It seems obvious to me now, but at the time I never really read any fiction at all before Dostoevsky.

What is your most evocative memory?
My sister Angela and I are kids riding bikes around our neighborhood in Hammond, Indiana. We pass a yard where a Doberman Pinscher always barks at us from behind a fence. As we ride past the dog, it finds a way out, and starts chasing us. Angela and I peddle faster to race home, but my chain busts, and I fall on the asphalt. I see the dog racing up to me in all its horror. When it finally approaches me, it stops, cocks its head, and looks so confused. It sniffs me and then runs back to its home. Perhaps I remember it because that was my first real encounter with fear.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
Some pieces take months. It usually starts with a thought of a scene or an idea. I’ll toss the idea around in my head for weeks or months trying to shape the characters and setting into the scene. I only start writing once I have a well developed portion of the story. At that point I start to write a draft in my notebook. When I am done with a written draft, I’ll type it out. Then I’ll go back and forth with that process several times until I think I have a complete first draft. I’ll put it away for a couple of months then take it out and look to see what needs work.

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down?
Carl Jung’s The Red Book. I read Man and His Symbols and some other work by Jungian theorists, but I got a quarter of a way through it and began to think it was too personal of a book. It was published after Jung passed away, and I am not sure how he would have felt having this read by total strangers.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
Stephen D. Gutierrez. He is one of the few writers I know of that has managed to break free from the preoccupation many Chicanx writers have with realism. His fiction is a blend of essay and fiction that I haven’t seen in any other writer besides what Ron Sukenick was doing in the seventies.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape your stories.
Mark Rothko’s series of dark triptychs have been a major influence on my fiction for years. On the surface there doesn’t seem to be much going on, but the painting allow for contemplation and, at times, the painting seem to vibrate with energy. Like Rothko’s paintings, I like for readers to contemplate their own experience in the world after reading my fiction.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
Michaelangelo and Paulo Cohelo

When did you first realize you wanted to be an author/artist?
Talent, they say, is a seed planted inside everyone. I discovered my seed when I was 3 years old, and since then, I've been watering it with lots of practice.

How long does it take you to choose the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
It depends on my imagination. If it's a poem, It'd take me at least 3 weeks. If it's visual art, I spend a lot of time on this.

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down?
By the river piedra, I sat down and wept. Actually, I didn't put it down. I just don't want to rush the book

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
I'd say Morgan Rice, the author of Sorcerer's Ring.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape your stories.
"The devil Judge."

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
I think that as someone working within soft science academia, poetry has always been a way for me to sensemake the things that I do. Although I tend to be busy working within Public Health research and collaborations, I always try to reserve time for myself. In these moments, I enjoy the silence that comes, whether it comes from my home, a coffee shop, or my local library. By occupying space both literally and figuratively within my life, I find that allocating time enriches my experiences instead of trading off.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
I used to do Debate and Forensics back in high school, and one of the authors that I read for competition right off the bat was Andrea Gibson. In that time, I was just a shy queer Gaysian trying to navigate my constellations of identity, and by reading a poet so open about their queerness, willing to swim through the muck of what that means…I found that incredibly inspiring for the work I would wrote later. Adding in the fact that they are also a spoken word poet, it made me realize how differing presentations of poetics can genuinely complement and inform each other. Watching their performances on YouTube always gets me in the writing mood.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
I think that there will always be a gap between what I imagine and how it manifests. There’s always going to be certain limitations within any lexicon we choose to collaborate with, because with it, comes certain inherent rhetorics that if severed, makes the language incomprehensible. I try my best to practice analytical precision, being as intentional as I can with imagery I weave into my poems, but there always seems to be things that slip or reconfigurate into something else entirely. No to say that this challenge is inherently bad, I just think that its another layer that always for wiggle room between the tangible and ephemeral.

What historical time would you most like to live in?
Now. Or perhaps millions of years in the future where humans no longer exist the way we do (if at all). Would that be considered historic time?

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down?
The last book I didn’t finish reading (that I always say that I will get to) is Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. I picked it up because I was starting a virtual book club with my fellow interns after our summer cohort was over in Michigan. Although a dozen of us got the book and got a decent ways into it, academia started back up, causing us to read out of obligation instead of for fun. If I could find the time, I would definitely like to pick it back up, but it may feel strange knowing that I will then be reading it in isolation.

Whose work do you feel most resembles your own?
I always seem to draw inspiration from the works I currently read, so I would say Dear Memory by Victoria Chang just because I finished reading a few days ago. After her visit to my campus, I knew that I wanted to read more of her work – after all, you don’t see many Asian-American poets writing about the stuff she writes about. We’re both second(ish) generation immigrants, so there’s naturally going to be solidarity there in which we mourn and speculate about futures we could have had. I personally enjoy tangible philosophies, and with her essay-poem forms, it lent a lot towards my theoretical navigations as I move forward to my other projects.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
I will go with the unpopular answer and that would be no. My kids are better artists than most. My wife fully supports me. I have written many a status report in the corporate world which were not exactly what the boss was looking for. Being a a creative person in a non-creative world is a challenge.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
I have to go back to a class back in seventh grade. We spent a few weeks on Tale of Two Cities. I almost took up knitting. I can’t even credit Dickens but rater the teacher. I recently reread Tale of Two Cities and did not enjoy,

When did you first realize you wanted to be an author/artist?
There was a girl I went to high school with. She could draw almost anything well. I found that an incredible superpower.

What is the single best sentence you've ever read?
That may be the single best question I have been asked.

“She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running/like a watercolor in the rain.”

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down?
John Updike -Rabbit Run. His privilege and misogyny were alarming. John is from my hometown, and it shows.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
I am currently reading a book for Kate Kort. She has two novels to her name, and I am doing a pre-read on her third. The first two were Glass and Laika. Kate is a busy mother, and she finds time to write quality fiction.

Whose work do you feel most resembles your own?
Patti Smith, as in her writing she finds everything worth noting.

What does your creative process look like?
I wish I had a process. I am too random for that. I will be reading one moment, painting the next and heading out for a run next. I am like that with almost everything. For the most part, I pay attention, and find beauty in the everyday. Now if I could learn to type well.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
Everyone has to make trade-offs in order to pursue their artistic ambitions. I would have more money had I not stopped working full-time. However, I have been given every opportunity to focus on my writing and I haven't taken full advantage of it. A dear friend even gave me a large sum of money to enable me to give up work for a year and write my novel, but I didn't use the time as wisely as I should have done. I have no real excuse for not having completed a whole novel by now, and this thought does get me down.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
When I was around seven, a friend introduced me to Enid Blyton [the Naughty Amelia Jane books, to be precise) which transformed me into a bookworm. I had been a precocious reader in pre-school apparently but by the time I was six or seven my interest in reading had vanished and I was much more interested in watching cartoons on TV! I actually had remedial reading lessons in Junior School, partly because I missed a lot of school in the second year due to illness. However, it was definitely Blyton who got me reading and kept me reading - to the point where I was only really interested in reading her books and wouldn't read anything else. However, I was very lucky to have an excellent teacher in the last year of junior school who introduced me to C.S.Lewis's Narnia books which were a revelation to me. They were so imaginative, and introduced me to a much wider fantasy world - I learned about centaurs and fauns, nymphs and naiads and dryads. They paved the way for me to read The Lord Of The Rings, several years later, which I loved and read nine times, though I grew out of it many years ago. I do read mainstream fiction, but the authors I have most loved are generally clever, funny fantasy writers like Terry Pratchett and Jasper Fforde who crack open your worldview like an egg to let new ideas flood out and in.

When did you first realize you wanted to be an author/artist?
It was when I was eight. My mum bought me a Brother typewriter for Christmas, which was probably the best gift I ever received. I wrote my first 'novel' on it, straight away. It was about a brownie pack who go camping and have a series of highly unlikely adventures, very much in the style of Enid Blyton but with a lot more spelling mistakes. It had about ten chapters, and was a complete story. I was very proud of it, and I started telling adults who asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up that I wanted to be 'an authoress'. Mrs Burgess, whom I mentioned in my answer to the last question, encouraged me greatly by reading out my stories in school assemblies and pinning my poems to the wall in the classroom. Strangely, this didn't lead to me being bullied, as you'd imagine, but it has occurred to me recently that I was probably a fairly unbearable eight-year-old.

What is the single best sentence you've ever read?
This is impossible to answer. There are so many. I've always quite like Paul Klee's comment that 'Art should not reproduce the visible but make visible the unseen'. There are numerous sentences I love from novels, but I particularly like the first sentence of Kate Atkinson's novel Behind The Scenes At The Museum. Unlike novels like David Copperfield and Midnight's Children, the story doesn't begin with the birth of the protagonist, but with the conception of the heroine: 'I exist,' says the narrator. In two words, Atkinson nods to Cartesian philosophy and introduces the theme of the purpose of existence, which is basically what all serious novels address fundamentally.

What historical time would you most like to live in?
I enjoyed living in the 1990s, but I guess I've been there and done that (though I didn't buy the t-shirt). If I was going to travel back to a point before my birth, I would have to be encased in something that made me invisible and stopped me from catching or transmitting any infections, as I wouldn't want to mess with the timeline. If I could be simply an observer, I'd probably choose a time like Elizabethan England or Ancient Greece, or any point in time or space where I could find out the answers to historical conundrums - what did happen to the people of Roanoke? Did King Arthur actually exist? Did Richard of York murder his nephews in the Tower? It would be interesting, and probably horrifying, to travel forward to find out how bad things get before the human race wipes itself out or pulls itself together.

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down?
It was The Last House On Needless Street by Catriona Ward. I read the first few chapters and guessed the whole story, and I just couldn't be bothered to read it to find out if I was right so I looked up the plot online. I was right about all the main plot points, so I stopped reading it. However, this doesn't mean the novel is badly written - in fact, I thought it was beautifully written, but I was very busy at the time and a bit stressed and I just couldn't face ploughing on to check (among other things) whether I'd worked it out correctly. Unfortunately, a lifetime of studying English Literature, book-reading, film-watching and TV drama watching has made me very good at anticipating plot twists. It's a curse, not a gift.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
My tutor at the OU, where I completed an MA in Creative Writing in 2020, has written some brilliant historical detective novels, with female working-class protagonists and a touch of the supernatural, among other things, and I think she is a gifted writer who is not as well-known as she deserves to be. Her name is Katherine Stansfield.