Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?
I’m fairly eclectic. I’ve sung in choirs (tenor/baritone), played piano, and performed improv theater. I used to space out in school all the time, drawing sketches and comic books. For a short while, I even did some interpretive dance.

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received?
I was a sophomore in high school. It was a ghastly poem, but my English teacher praised me for it. He was either insane, or possessed immense fortitude. But I felt encouraged, and I’ve been writing ever since. Thank you, Mr. Levine, wherever you are.

What is the single best sentence you've ever read?
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. It still takes me 5/10 minutes and a Wikipedia entry to understand it. Every time.

Did you have formal training in literature/art? What ways do you continue your creative education?
I went back to school in my 30’s and picked up a MA in poetry at UC Davis. Before that, during, and since, I’ve studied through imitation of the greats. Whenever I came across a poem and wondered, “How did they create such lyricism?” or “I feel I’ve been on a roller coaster; how’d they do that?” I imitated the poem until I was able to create the effect in question on my own. Once I became so confused/frustrated with Robert Lowell that I scanned his entire collected works. That really gave me a good sense of rhythm. I’ve also read the dictionary (not straight through), and done topical research on my subjects. I still browse through my book of poetic forms and pick forms to practice until I get a sense for the timing and flow of the form.

What is your biggest creative doubt?
Did I overthink this? Am I overexplaining? Leaving it too subtle? Does it actually matter? Am I the only one who thinks this is interesting? Why do I feel so alone and unsupported? Does that mean I’m no good? How can I effect change? Am I saying something horrible and blinded by privilege? Why do I feel so alone and unsupported? Can my words really open up a space for people to think differently? Will anything I write matter in the slightest to anyone? Why do I feel so alone and unsupported?

What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
My parents used to love suggesting that I put my writing skills to use at some sort of job that involved writing. Why don’t I become a newspaper journalist, or start a blog? Sorry, no. One of the most brutally effective ways to make someone stop enjoying something is to pay them to do it.

What change would you like to see in the publishing world?
What I’d most like to see is more of my work in print. And for the publishing world to figure out how to access the insane amounts of money that Hollywood manages to access, so I can be adequately rewarded for the 30+ years I’ve poured into my craft. The best do not deserve hundreds of millions, and the worst do not deserve nothing. Bring some balance into the whole endeavor. I guess now I’m talking about society. I know I just finished saying that getting paid to write would kill the fun. I’m not sure how to resolve this. I need to eat. I need shelter. I need to not simply die or be shuffled to the streets when I get sick and can’t pay the medical bill.

Is there an overarching theme to your body of work, or is each piece a new exploration?
I feel like I roam very far. I don’t stop reworking a poem until it surprises me, so yeah, every piece is a new exploration. However, I have noticed several themes that keep cropping up now and then. One would be the integration of science and new discoveries. Another would be the interplay between individual and group selves.

When you begin a new piece of work, where do you start?
I start with the first word. Starting is what matters. The ideas are always there, an abundant natural resource. It is never a particular idea that matters. It is always the ability to start writing that matters. Usually, the words I start with are awful. Cliche, dull, overused. I just keep writing until the boring rust shakes off.

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
I wouldn’t. Unlimited time is a curse; I’d just fill it with video games. I need structure or nothing happens. Limited time is where the creativity’s at. Whatever I find interesting, right now is the only time I can pursue it. That said, I’m slowly going deaf. I need to learn ASL.

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received?
As a child, I wrote (what I didn’t realize at the time was) fan fiction, based on my favorite television shows, such as The A Team and Knight Rider. Very poor stuff, and not many people would’ve read these tales, but they were well-received among my peers when they did!

Then, when I was ten, I won a writing contest which I believe was held across a number of schools. I think I won because there were very few entrants, at least compared to the concurrent art competition that was being held for the same event.

What is the single best sentence you've ever read?
I can’t choose a favorite, but there’s a line that I love from Star of the Sea by Joseph O’Connor. 

The novel features a decent, fair-minded land-owner character who has inherited his estates from a long line of cruel and nasty landlords. As a result, a hit is put on this man, hated as he is because of his ancestors. I believe the line related to this reads:

“His family tree became his gallows.”

Very creative line right there, beautiful in both simplicity and complexity.

Did you have formal training in literature/art? What ways do you continue your creative education?
I studied English and Philosophy at college. That helped! 

I don’t read as much as I should. I try to write something every day. I believe that reading and writing are among the best ways to improve as a writer.

What is your biggest creative doubt?
That we no longer let bygones be bygones. 

If I’m entirely honest, it’s the fear of cancel culture. That’s external to the creative process. Charges of cultural appropriation could easily be levelled at me for ‘The Troglodyte’, for example. I’d rather not be in a situation where I find myself having to defend work, explaining: “It’s not about X; it’s about Y” because it’s really up to readers to interpret work however they deem fit, right? And there’s the crux. It’s impossible for a writer to defend against someone else’s analysis of their story. I’d also hold the strongly-held view that just because a story’s narrator is a narcissistic psychopath doesn’t mean that the author is. The need to justify that to anyone – particularly to fellow creatives – is mind-boggling to me.

What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
I’m certainly in the pantser category of fiction writers. There’s a plethora of advice out there for plotters. There are writing guides for developing characters too. A wall-flower character, or a party animal – what defines these character types?

Griping about this, if I could be so bold, I’d ask writers if what they’re doing is writing or if they’re just painting by numbers. Having said that, if I could incorporate more structural coherence into my work – integrating or subverting tropes, for instance, or successfully hitting marks when it comes to inciting incidents or climaxes – I probably would. Creatively, it doesn’t appeal. It sounds a little like an alien language to me. I usually prefer to figure that stuff out on my own.

Is there an overarching theme to your body of work, or is each piece a new exploration?
I’d like to think that there are discernible differences in style and theme in my work, although I find myself returning to mine similar seams. I think certain dichotomies are prevalent: Religion versus science, tradition versus modernity, that kind of thing runs through a lot of my stuff, often – if I could be critical of myself – in a naive and ham-fisted fashion! 

But if you look at actors, if I can draw an analogy, Gary Oldman or Daniel Day-Lewis strive to inhabit the characters they play, while for the most part, Jack Nicholson always seems to have a little bit of Jack in there. I don’t find fault with either approach when it comes to thematic concerns, or writing more broadly, in multiple works from one author. Ideally, though, I’d aim towards being different with each new piece of writing.

When you begin a new piece of work, where do you start?
It might be a line I like the sound of, playing over in my head. 

It could be a generalisation or something quite idiomatic that I can harness as the launchpad for a piece of fiction.

It might be a “What if...?” situation, drawn from real life.

It could be a writing prompt, perhaps a series of words or a scenario, that needs to be incorporated into a story.

It could be a mix of all of those things, and more. 

It’s all grist to the mill!

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?  
I do a bit of photography and even before I got into poetry and fiction, I wrote songs on the piano. I think that I came to poetry via song lyrics as they share a lot of similarities. 

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received? 
I think I was about 8 years old when I wrote my first poetry chapbook - it was a small copy book - and gave it to my mum for her birthday. It had illustrations and a different colour writing on each page. My mum recently rediscovered it and sent me photos of a few pages. I was astonished at the topics I wrote about (love, nature, politics, ...) and the language ranging from romantic to very blunt and bold! My first published song lyrics then won an honourable mention in a competition, I was 13 years old and so happy about the success. That encouraged me to keep going. 

What is the single best sentence you've ever read? 
I've just finished Paul Lynch's "Prophet Song", which won the Booker Prize 2023, and I underlined so many brilliantly evocative sentences. This one is my favourite: "She moves about the house listening to her son speak from across the city, stands by his bedroom door, the streetlight that falls into the room is a ghost of some wintered moon." His writing style is so vivid and poetic, I wish I could bathe in his words. 

What is your most evocative memory?
I have a number of very vivid, evocative childhood memories. One of them is picking cherries with my grandpa in the heat of summer. My grandparents had a big old cherry tree in their garden, among other fruit trees and vegetable patches, and every summer holiday, I was allowed on the tall ladder and helped my grandpa pick cherries. I felt safe with him high up, he was a very tall and broad-shouldered man, and his hands were like bear paws. Later, we always had a cherry pit spitting competition, and I remember that I so enjoyed being free and wild and close to nature. On those days, I felt like nothing bad could ever happen to me. 

What change would you like to see in the publishing world?  
Although the vast majority of my experiences in the publishing world are positive, I have also dealt with extremely toxic and/or unprofessional people. I sometimes wish there was an overarching organisation that we could turn to for advice and guidance, and one that penalises abusive behaviour, as these often go without consequences at the moment, and new, inexperienced authors fall for their false promises. Also, I would like better working conditions and more money invested into culture and arts in general, but I think that's a given anyway!

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
If I had both unlimited time and energy, I would learn how to dance. I love music and movement, so I have a lot of fun freestyling when I'm out, or even just at home, but I have no idea of how to put together a choreography and stick to it. So that's what I'd love to try with no pressure, just for fun. 

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create? 
For me, the most meaningful thing in this world is to be able to look and see the world, and everything it contains, and photography comes first in this regard. I have been driven by the power of photography long before I realized the poet in me. I also learned to digitally manipulate photos at an early age due to the exposure to computer. This led me to learn to design and make collages. I have designed many posters, banners and book covers, but collage has been a very recent pursuit.  So I would consider myself a photographer and a collagist apart from being a poet. 

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received? 
I believe I was nineteen. I remember showing it to my friends and everyone liked it and I started to believe I could actually write poetry, as in, I had achieved a sense of agency of a poet. I suppose the first poem catapulted a momentum that kept me going for a long time, a time of great doubt that whatever I wrote did not actually matter, but I kept writing anyway fuelled by that momentum. It is a truth universally acknowledged… that if somebody persistently sticks with something, they are meant to see better days, but in most cases, they need a bit motivation once in a while to keep going, and the less fortunate ones do not come across that motivation. 

What is the single best sentence you've ever read? 
This is a tricky one because I am compelled to go a reductionist’s way and discriminate. So instead of saying the best sentence I’ve ever read, I would say the best one that comes to mind at the moment, it is a quote from Dostoevsky’s The Idiot: “Beauty will save the world”. The quote is addressed to Prince Myshkin, that it is one of the views he propounds that are profoundly silly. How can beauty actually save the world? Such a naïve view that overlooks all the suffering and horrors of the world. I recently came across a tweet that said if somebody says to a poet “Get a real job”, the person should stop listening to music, looking at paintings or photographs, watching cinemas… et cetera for one month, only then the person would understand the value of artists and their contribution to everyday life. The question of beauty comes into the scene such a way, that without it we cannot go on. We cannot be caged into a box without seeing the beauty of the sky, beauty of the lover’s face, the beauty of rhythm, beauty of the world, and the world can no longer be saved when all its beauty is stripped out of it. 

Did you have formal training in literature/art? What ways do you continue your creative education?
I have a literature major but it is obviously not a degree to fuel the creative side of literature, but rather the critical side of it. However, much part of critically looking at texts contributed to my creative compulsion. I have thus far followed the method that Roethke puts as “imitation, conscious imitation, is one of the great methods, perhaps the method of learning to write.” But simultaneously it is hard to improve as a writer just by imitation. And living in South Asia, becoming a literary snob my English major made me, I did not arduously search for help to progress my creative side. And even when I did seek help, I could not come across any mentors or systematic help that would progress my command over the craft of poetry. It is surely hard to come across such opportunities in Bangladesh. But there are always ways to improve oneself, and reading craft books helped a great deal to stretch myself and eventually led me decide to seek a creative writing degree which currently I am working towards. Ultimately, I would say for any artist, engaging with the art/life is the best way to continue doing it. As a poet, I would say as long as I am able to read, I will be able to write.  

When you begin a new piece of work, where do you start?
I am writing down things all the time. Words or phrases or a whole sentence that passes through my head while doing other things. But mostly when I start working on a poem, I am struck by one of many passing thoughts and then start putting together a structure with sentences or ideas I already wrote down long before I schemed this particular poem. Usually, my creative process is gathering things one by one until the basket is full. I have realized that intentionally forcing myself to write works little with me and often in bad way. My process sounds a lot like the “Trigger” Richard Hugo describes in Triggering Town, but I am by and by getting more in control over what I write instead of constructing a whole poem intimated by a trigger. Editing gives a lot of control in that too. 

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
I actually do have unlimited time at this point of life that started giving me a sense of life being too long, which it definitely is, until it isn’t. I think it is rather money or resources that would make me pursue my hobby more actively. For example, I have been trying to save up for a camera for years, if I had one, I would be a very busy person pursuing my hobby as a photographer. Everywhere I look there are things to capture, people’s faces with their endless expressions, animals, landscapes, civilization, geometry of borders, lines, streets, lights and shadows. I would be a very busy man. People have time, but time feels worthless sometimes, but also there is the idea that the monotonous boredom, a “sense of not laboring when one would otherwise labor” is necessary. 

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?  
My academic background is in music, first as a performer and then as a musicologist. It’s musicology, in fact, that inspired me to become serious about writing prose—I had a professor that told us: “You all think you are musicology majors, but the truth is you are English majors with a given subject.” I think he was trying to get us to be more sedulous about our writing quality, but it stayed with me, particularly since the work that I did borrowed heavily from literary theories that explored how we as writers can mean things. I still play quite a bit for pleasure, especially if I want to get in the right mood or flow for creativity, though I no longer gig much.

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received?
The first creative writing piece I can remember making was a humorous poem aping the style of Ogden Nash, who I had recently discovered and idolized in a way only a ten or eleven-year-old could. Other kids thought it was weird. It earned me a lot of head-patting from the adults in my life, who told me I was precocious. I thought was a compliment—until I became old enough to use the term myself as adult-speak for annoying.

What is the single best sentence you've ever read?
There are too many favorites to share, but one I often come back to—and it always gets me—is from the beginning of Matsuo Bashō’s Hiabun Oku-no-hosomichi, which is translated in English variously as Backroads to Far Towns or The Narrow Road to the Interior. The line is (at least in Sam Hammill’s translation, which is a favorite):

“A Lifetime adrift in a boat or in old age leading a tired horse into the years, every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.”

For me, that line encapsulates the whole work as perfectly as any opening in literature—almost (but not quite) so well that the work itself is superfluous.

Did you have formal training in literature/art? What ways do you continue your creative education?
Yes, but indirectly. I covered tons of literary theory in graduate school as a musicologist, though we used it as a tool for analyzing questions of music and meaning. At this point, I continue to try and expand my craft and mastery mostly through close reading and analysis of writing I enjoy.

What is your biggest creative doubt?  
I have a fairly distinctive voice, which we are told is a good thing, but it can tend toward the baroque, particularly as I developed my voice writing image-heavy post-modern poetry. I often agonize about whether I should follow the voice in my head or try and make things simpler for the reader. I’ve always been the kind of reader that enjoyed the extra work to understand difficult but worthwhile writing like Joyce or Faulkner or Cummings, but it has got to be good enough to pay that effort back to the reader, and that is a difficult line to tread with confidence.

What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
Write about what you know. It sounded smart when I was young, but most of the writers that really lean into that tend to be pedantic and unimaginative. I like reading work where you feel like you can be delightedly surprised by a character or a turn of phrase that still seems to ring true to the character, and I have a hard time writing that way if I am to stuck on sticking to what I know.

What change would you like to see in the publishing world?
I think the industry worries too much about trying to predict what will be popular. The big hits tend to be something fresh and out of the box that no one expected or asked for, or else classic in some way. I think trying to chase a trend is a losing proposition both for writers and publishers, but it dictates a lot of what we see on the shelf from year to year.  

Is there an overarching theme to your body of work, or is each piece a new exploration?
Not consciously as such, but I’d have to say that over the last few years, hope has been a pretty consistent theme in most of my work, either explicitly or tangentially. At the same time, I really enjoy worldbuilding as a creative exercise, so each story is built from scratch in terms of its textures and priorities.

When you begin a new piece of work, where do you start?
With a conflict, usually articulated in the form of a ‘what if.’ For instance, in Finding Serenity there is a number of ‘what ifs,’ but the big one that got it started was reading about various people’s experiences with Schizophrenia. Some people describe creating positive relationships with the voices they hear, and I had to ask how they would feel about that voice being lost—whether it would feel like the loss of a friend, or perhaps worse because they may never have existed in the first place.

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
Theoretical Physics. I have a fun little theory for how to get relativity to play nice with quantum physics, but don’t have the time or math to work it out seriously.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?
I am a multimedia artist who works with photos, films, text (essay and poetry) 

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received?
I was 18 when I wrote my first short story and a certain writer saw it on my Facebook page. He found the story appealing and asked for my permission to publish it on his blog. 

What is the single best sentence you've ever read?
"When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it."

Did you have formal training in literature/art? In what ways do you continue your creative education?
I didn't have a formal education in literature or in my practice of photography and film but through the internet have sustained my artistic education. 

What is your biggest creative doubt? 
Uncertainty about originality 

What change would you like to see in the publishing world?
To increase accessibility to publishers for African writers and artists.

Is there an overarching theme to your body of work, or is each piece a new exploration?
A central theme in my work is the exploration of cultural heritage and identity, especially within marginalized or underrepresented communities. I am deeply intrigued by how culture shapes individuals and communities, informs their sense of belonging, self-expression, and worldview.

My projects often explore the interplay between traditional practices, rituals, and ceremonies, alongside contemporary challenges affecting cultural preservation and adaptation. Whether capturing the vibrant colors of northern Nigeria's cultural festivals, the intimate moments of everyday life in rural villages, or the resilience of communities facing environmental challenges, my goal is to portray the human experience with authenticity. 

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
Fishing 

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create? 
I did a survey of sound art and audio theory in my undergrad and connections electronic music solidified a kind of intellectual journey some of that is featured on my soundcloud. I ran away to rave clubs when I was teengager in the 90s. I dreamed of inhabiting that subculture and was sad when it started to fade. 

I really went into a depression where I didn’t want to dance anymore. I just wasn’t feeling it anymore and dancing was a big part of who I was. After I got diagnosed with MS I really started taking dancing seriously again. As serious as I can take it at my age. 

My first language was Polish. Transitioning from thinking in one language to another was the foundation of my linguistic education. I’ve written everything from legal briefs to advertising copy but my goal was always to write fiction. In the pursuit of that goal I acknowledged my being as a poet.

How has your view of the creative process changed since you first started?  
My first tries at being artistic were very private: automatic writing, candle meditation, scribbles. I am very public now. To me, that means leading with craft in most interactions. I saw an interview where Tom Waits said you have to be nice to be your muses and I have been since. 

Personifying a visitation was more palatable to me than waiting to be inspired. The teleological viewpoint is that we are radios receiving consciousness more than in the possession of it. I think that was the big access shift in my process that I stopped believing that ideas belonged to or were generated by me. When I have an idea I try to stop what I am doing and pursue it.

What author or artist’s popularity do you find confusing/inexplicable?
I find all popularity confusing. The word celebrity originates in the church. I don’t think it’s any different today, it's just that our metaphorical church is our shared values. Part of me always wanted to be celebrated but what do I do if that never happens: quit? I don’t like it when people hate on literary celebrities out of jealousy. I kind of pity celebrities. I care about how celebrities use their platforms more than covet popularity because markets are fickle – some get lucky while most don’t. 

Did you have formal training in literature/art? What ways do you continue your creative education? 
I have a BA in literary studies and an MFA in Poetry. The poem I shared with Zoetic  is from 2012 after my BA. I was an older student because I was in the Navy before, generally, studying literature made me less arbitrary. Actually, I was planning on going to law school but I kept returning to literature. We had basic internet when I was at sea and I used a lot of that bandwidth reading Joseph Brodsky, Ferdinand de Saussure, Joseph Conrad, Richard Wright, among others.  

I don't know what it was: New York, the curriculum, the culmination of a journey, but I had a profound experience. Since then I feel like I am more on a mission than pursuing a career. I’ve always considered myself a lifelong student but since then my appetite has grown considerably. Someone told me that if you find yourself in a city you should read the poets. This gave me the idea of finding my city as a poet. I’m in San Francisco now.

I’m lucky to have had parents who had a bookshelf and I come from a multilingual background. I believe in luck wholeheartedly with the caveat that believing in one's own luck can open a lot of avenues for new knowledge that we disregard all around us. Unknown knowns by far are the most generative areas that I know of.

What is your biggest creative doubt? 
Being on the wrong side of history. Ezra Pound is a great cautionary tale. Xenophobia and mysticism share the same generative cycle. Frankfurt school was interested in finding the fascism within us all and it is my journey too because I don’t think I am superior. I think poets are kinds of mystics and especially susceptible to bad ideas. I have a lot of brain fog. I used to be very confident but I lost most of my youthful bravado. Most of that confidence didn’t make me a better writer anyway. I also fear that I am not ambitious enough.

What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you? 
‘Just be yourself.’ I’m not sure if this is creative advice but the self is not where art lies. Selfish art doesn’t sell. It’s linguistically myopic. Being also seems to reside somewhere else. In my world view the self is just a coping mechanism. Being that mighty to a host of problems but I am pretty sure it won’t create good art.

Do you have a dedicated or preferred place to work? How does it influence the way you work?  
My preferred place to work is at a desk with a view of a city skyline. I haven’t had that for a while. I sit on a yoga mat and ball. I screwed up my back and neck and I have to not sit in awkward positions for too long, I also like to walk and talk into my phone. I spent a lot of time trying to find ideal places to write and what it really became about was mental space. 

Is there an overarching theme to your body of work, or is each piece a new exploration? 
I’m on a mission to discredit material reality. I had an experience that made up my mind – some sort of simulated reality. Simulacra yes, but seemed to me a cargo cult of iteration, at times a video game, material at the end only to rub it in. That being said, I cut my teeth on activism and I always try to include some subversive antiwar & crip protest poems. 

The refugee experience has shaped me in an unexpected way. Maybe I should have expected it. My father told me when he was a child in the communist orphanage after his mother put him up for adoption he didn’t want pictures taken of him. His reasoning was that he believed that he was going to become a freedom fighter in the future. I think this conception of self is very common. Maybe being a secret agent that works for the universe.  

When you begin a new piece of work, where do you start? 
It really depends: there are poems that are spontaneous and a great many that generate from topics that I want to address. All you really need is one good line or couplet. I’ve also had good luck taking a proverbial microscope to the anatomy of things where there is a lot of cool language under the surface. 

For instance, mycology has really expanded my poetic range because I am not naturally attracted to floral language. When it comes to prose I look for complete ideas because I come from a place that believes that fiction is philosophy in action. I’ve never been a person to journal.

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up? 
Sculpture, I feel like I view a lot of the writing I do that way rather than textual weaving. There is something about making at that material level that has always eluded me. I am fascinated about the genesis of written language because “text” has cross technological relations with the loom. 

We take for granted other ways that language can emerge. On another tip, since the articulation of the Turing Test we've kind of decided that chatbots are AI and that reminds me of Ovid’s Pygmalion where a Cypriot sculptor carves a woman of ivory alabaster and marries her. If there is a ceiling to technology like chatbot AI, maybe sculpture that can trick perception into devotion is the greatest art.

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received? 
I don’t know about my first work, but I have a strong memory of writing a story in first grade, and my teacher insisting I must have copied it (plagiarised it!) because I had spelled all the words correctly, including the big words, like inventor, festival, and mechanical. After that, I remember taking care to stick to single syllable words.

What is the single best sentence you've ever read? 
I love you.

What is your most evocative memory?
So, here’s the thing, I don’t have particularly evocative memories, because I have aphantasia, including the related condition SDAM (Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory). That all sounds fancy, but it simply means that—like about 2-4% of the population—I don’t have a visual imagination. If you ask me to picture an apple, I can’t. I can recall what I know of apples: their shape, colour, texture, and form, and form a kind of conceptual idea of an apple, but I can’t form a picture. Similarly, if you ask me to remember some event from my past, I can remember what happened, but not with any sensory detail.

What is your biggest creative doubt?
Tough question to answer honestly, but here goes. That the work I make doesn’t matter, or make a difference, to anyone but myself. That I will never manage to create a work that resonates with others in the way I hope it might. That I am, in the end, too odd and particular to have a perspective that others will find valuable. That the writing and publishing industry is such that, even if I were to create a work of great wonder and significance, and even if it were to be published, it would not reach the folk who most need it, or might most find something of value within it.

What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
You must write every day. I used to feel so guilty about not writing every day, since it was advice that many successful and productive folk shared with me. Only later did I realise that it just doesn’t work for me, and that it’s important to recognise there are a whole bunch of really valid and important reasons why you might not be able to write every day. Living with chronic illness or pain means that some days, writing just isn’t possible. When I was younger—desperately poor, homeless, and mothering little folk—my material conditions meant that writing was often a long way down my daily list of priorities, well after securing shelter and food. Even now, when I am living a relatively privileged life, with secure housing, a healthy income, a loving partner, and all the trimmings, writing every day isn’t a healthy thing for me to try to live up to. All it does is promote feelings of guilt and shame. For me: write as much as you can, as often as you can, is healthier and more achievable. And kinder.

What change would you like to see in the publishing world?
My sense is that the publishing industry is in a state of dramatic change at the moment, and has been for at least the last 20 to 25 years. Many, if not most, of those changes are driven by changes in technology, paired with capitalism. Mostly what I see is writing becoming more hustle than artform, for many writers. Having a platform, and gaining large numbers of followers, is increasingly seen as a necessity of ‘being’ a writer. Or at least of building a career. More and more publishers are focused on publishing writers who already have an audience for their work. Successful writers, in such a world, are not necessarily the best writers, but the folk with the best hustle. They’re marketing and PR folk, rather than (just) writers. Which … saddens me. I wonder what voices we are losing and missing out on because the industry seems to be focusing more and more on what’s popular than what’s important or exciting. I fear the voices that are getting lost are those we most need to hear: the voices of the queers and the outsiders.

In terms of change, then, I’d love to see publishing pivot to a model that focuses more on the quality and relevance of writing than on its marketability. I’d love to see the already robust conversations that happen around writing deepen and extend—moving away from shallow clickbait towards serious discussion of art and ideas. I’d love to see us shift to a model in which technology and the economy serve various stakeholders in the writing and publishing industry in becoming the best version of ourselves, and in building meaningful connections with each other, rather than increasing our sense of alienation, overwhelm, stress, and competitiveness.

What is the most unbelievable thing that has ever happened to you?
I was silent for several years as a child. I suffered from selective mutism, which is an anxiety disorder. Though I did not speak to another human being, I would sometimes crawl into my wardrobe and speak to the dead, who I believed lived with the fauns and other magical creatures in Narnia. Sometimes, the dead that I loved most came to sit in the wardrobe with me, to drink tea, eat buttered toast, and tell stories.  

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
Lying around in pleasant locations reading, with beautiful drinks constantly refreshed beside me, and occasional breaks for dancing, swimming, and feeding baby goats.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create? 
I paint & draw, create mixed-media art pieces, do freelance graphic design work and love film photography. You can find more of my published work here (http://thorn.jp)

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received?
I was in elementary school when I first began drawing where I was told I had a natural aptitude and talent, so I would say well, though I wish I had more folx in my younger days that understood the importance of career versus vocation.

What is the single best sentence you've ever read?
Live or die, but don't poison everything... (from Herzog by Saul Bellow and beginning of the poem Live by Anne Sexton.

Did you have formal training in literature/art? What ways do you continue your creative education?
Other than pre-undergraduate courses in high school, everything I know has been self taught. I continue my creative education by implementing daily writing and/or art practices, engaging in local as well as online communities, workshops, interfacing with other artists/sharing our work, and reading as much, as often as I can.

What is your biggest creative doubt?  
Having my work misinterpreted- while I know art is subjective and always open to interpretation, I get self-conscious about this mostly due to self-doubt combined with the years I spent minimizing my vocation within the arts. 

What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
I will never forget my AP art teacher in high school instructing me to make more use of my background space, often left blank or open on purpose-  I believe in intentionality within art & while I know this was meant as a helpful suggestion it went against the primary purpose of why I was creating my work the way the I was at the time. 

What change would you like to see in the publishing world?
More acceptance and platforms for marginalized voices, as well as less of a prerequisite standard as to what makes a ‘good’ or ‘great’ piece of writing.

Is there an overarching theme to your body of work, or is each piece a new exploration?
I gravitate towards writing about personal and/or shared experiences through my own lens. The themes that appear most often deal with gender identity, humanness, therapeutic processes, unlearning patriarchy, disdain for capitalism, being an adoptee, queerness, and being raised in the southern US. 

When you begin a new piece of work, where do you start?
At the intersection of the mind and heart.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?  
I dabble in textile and resin arts. I’m not especially accomplished with either, but there’s something immensely satisfying about creating something that can be held. 

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received? 
I was six, the first time I remember thinking of myself as a writer. I had just finished conducting a game of high seas adventure with a purple-and-yellow plastic pirate ship crewed by Winnie-the-Pooh toys. It was so much fun, I wanted to always remember the story I had played, so I wrote it down on a couple sheets of notebook paper, then proudly went to show my father. 

He praised my effort, explained how a helm and tiller work and why both would never be manned at the same time, and inquired at length why I had written about Winnie-the-Pooh characters, instead of making up my own. He was trying to encourage confidence and creativity, which I knew; and—I remember exactly how frustrated I felt, and how disheartened, that he could so completely miss the point.

What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
Show, don’t tell. 

It’s good advice—great advice—much of the time, and was an accurate assessment of needed improvement in my work. 

And, it’s not one-size-fits-all. You have to determine what to hone in on and what to abridge. I suspect most everyone who says show, don’t tell would agree that not everything needs to be shown, but that part often goes unsaid. 

Worse, show, don’t tell, can be used to privilege one set of literary/cultural traditions while marginalizing others, which Matthew Salesses discusses in Craft and the Real World (https://books.catapult.co/books/craft-in-the-real-world/).

So yes, show, don’t tell, but do so with deliberation: where, how, and to the extent the work requires. 

Is there an overarching theme to your body of work, or is each piece a new exploration?
I start each piece as a new exploration, and often find new paths to familiar roads. Obsessions with fairy tale, dream-text, and the entanglement of memory with both perception and imagination often ring through, as do themes of feminism, storytelling, and the bizarre.

When you begin a new piece of work, where do you start?
Play! My best writing always comes from the times I’m able to tap into the childlike excitement of getting to write; my worst when I feel like I have to write (or have to write a certain way). Once I start taking myself too seriously, my brain locks down. Either I can’t write at all, or I generate lifeless slush.

That’s not to say writing is easy, or that it doesn’t take hard work and dedication—because it isn’t, and it does—but that discovery, experimentation, and play are its core. I have to fall in love with language, ideas, characters, it has to be exciting. That means I have to curate a headspace that values wonderment and wandering, that privileges play, that coaxes the quiet part of my mind into feeling safe enough to speak. In practice, that often means writing prompts and exercises, convincing myself I have “permission” to write without self-censorship and see where the writing takes me. 

In The Triggering Town (https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393338720), Richard Hugo writes, “Depend on rhythm, tonality, and the music of language to hold things together. It is impossible to write meaningless sequences. In a sense the next thing always belongs. In the world of imagination, all things belong. If you take that on faith, you may be foolish, but foolish like a trout.” When I believe that (not just in concept, or as something that applies to other writers); when I truly believe that (not just in my head, but in my stomach, in my fingernails, at the base of my skull); when I write like I believe that, that’s when a piece truly begins.

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of coding. I love using Excel and other programs to automate or streamline tedious processes. With unlimited time (and resources) to learn the languages of computers, I think I would enjoy creating bespoke software, tailored to my specific needs and preferences.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?  
Although the first creative endeavor I can remember was writing (and singing) a song when I was four, I have always been a crafter.  I love making things to decorate my home. I sew,  sketch, stamp, and crochet.  I would like to teach myself to knit, using my grandmother’s knitting needles.  I garden, too, which is an art form in its own right.  And I even teach painting classes from time to time.  Writing is my passion though.

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received? 
I recall sitting on the landing between the first and second floors of my home, between my room and my parents’ room. It was the middle of the night, and because I could not sleep and I didn’t want to wake my parents, I sat on the landing under the skylight and was so taken by the beauty of the full moon shining down on me that I wrote a song about it.  I don’t recall the song and I don’t think I ever shared it, but that moment has stuck with me and the beauty of the moon has never ceased to impress me.  

Later, I wrote an interview with my father who was a Vietnam Veteran for my seventh grade English teacher. She gave me such wonderful feedback on all my papers, but this one in particular said I had a talent for making her feel emotions when she read my work.  That is still my goal when I write—to make the audience feel.

What is the single best sentence you've ever read? 
The next one I write or maybe all of them or none of them.  I couldn’t tell you because one minute I love what I write and the next I hate it all.  I think that is pretty normal for many writers, but in case it isn’t, don’t tell me otherwise. :)

What is your most evocative memory?
When I was maybe six, my father, who was less than ten years off the front lines of fighting in Vietnam, and I were driving upstate from Long Island to visit my grandparents.  We were cruising along on Route 17 in a monstrous Chevy Blazer whose engine roared over the wind from the open windows.  I had my doll with me and she and I were having a conversation when a bumble bee was sucked into the window and bounced off my chest and landed on my doll’s dress.  I was startled and screamed.  My scream scared my father, who went right into protection mode, grabbed the doll and was about to throw her out the window to save me, but when he saw the horrified look on my face, he stopped short. My poor doll separated at the neck at such an arrested stop and her head flew out the window. The rest of her hung limply, headlessly in my dad’s hand.  All he could do was hand her to me and keep driving. Without even feathering the break, he said, “I can’t stop. There’s too much traffic.”  I put a blanket over my head and cried into the empty neck of my doll.  I was sad for her. Sad for me. And sad for my dad who I felt I understood.

What is your biggest creative doubt? 
It is probably what every writer feels at one time or another: Am I good enough?  There are times I feel very confident and I love my work, but there are times I compare myself to others and it makes me feel less confident.  It is silly really to do that.  Who am I really trying to be “good enough” for? Obviously, my answer should be myself.  My style and voice are my own and it doesn’t make sense to compare myself to others.  But just like one can’t help who one loves, I can’t help but think critically about my work.  

I am also afraid I will run out of ideas.  Which is also terribly silly.  Whenever I think this, I force myself to see the ridiculousness of it.  The world is a big place full of interesting people and places--there is no way I will run out of ideas.  

What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
A great piece of advice is to read everything you can get your hands on. It is the best advice because as any English teacher will tell you (and I am one) reading makes you a better writer.  I love traveling through the pages of a book, love learning style and technique by reading.  I love allusion and knowing all the things I can know, but my reading days where I would gobble up whole books in one day are over.  I have kids and dogs and a bearded dragon and cats and a husband and a full-time job, and clubs to advise and teams to coach and golf leagues to play in and a nature trail to maintain, and family business to help run and, and, and--just writing that makes me tired.  Mostly, I read the homework I assign to students and a bit of pleasure reading before I go to bed, but that reading is often followed by immediate snoring.  Reading a book or a short story or a few poems for pleasure is a luxury I squish it in where I can because I like to milk every day for what it is worth, so I get to read a poem here or a piece of micro fiction here and there between grading papers, while standing in line at the grocery store, or while ignoring the laundry.  I would love to read more for pleasure, but at this point in my life, it is quite difficult to find time for it.

What change would you like to see in the publishing world?  
I wish it was easier to be published, faster, that there was some universal form for cover letters and submission guidelines.  It would be amazing if things were streamlined, but then again, if it was easy, everyone would do it.  Getting published and being a writer takes persistence and hard work. If a writer really wants to be published, they have to work for it.  So unless you are impatient like me, the process and the waiting is not a bad thing.  A lot of good can come from waiting.

What is the most unbelievable thing that has ever happened to you?
I think the most unbelievable thing that has happened to me has also happened to every human who has ever lived.  I was born.  What are the chances that I am here, or that you are here, that one egg and one sperm made me and only me.  The almost infinite number of possibilities that I could have been someone else or not at all is an astounding thought.  But if I really had to pick--I would say becoming a mom, to my children, my students, my dogs . . . that makes me feel blessed.

Whose work do you feel most resembles your own? 
I don’t presume to be like other writers, especially since I am not famous or prolific (yet).  However, I am drawn to Mary Oliver and her love of all things planet earth and sky.  I love Billy Collins’ dry humor and straightforward writing that makes me think about life and the world around me. Meg Kearney makes me feel the saddest of emotions.  Robert Hass makes me giggle.  Maya Angelou is inspiring.  I enjoy so many authors that I really can’t name them all or if I did, I would fill up more pages than you can give or need.  But what I will say is that I love all poems that make me feel the rich depths of my emotions.  I want to live in those poems, move with them, wrap myself up in them.  I love poets who understand what it means to be human and who allow all of us to be human with them.  I thank all of them for their generosity of spirit and talent.  

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
If I had unlimited time, I would learn to knit and make myself a cable knit sweater like J. Crew used to make in the 90’s. I would make blankets for all my friends.  After knitting, I would research near death experiences and write a book about them. If I had time and money, I would then travel to every state in the United States and stop at every giant ball of yarn, military park, landmark, geyser, or historical sign and learn as much as I could about the land in which I live.  I can see myself driving a small camper van with the windows down and my old dog in the front seat (or perhaps my hubby—he can come too).  I would like to visit Italy as well, trace my ancestry, walk where my blood-people once walked, and feel those ancestral spirits in me speak.