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  • The Gift That Never Starts Giving

    I went to see the comedian Sarah Millican recently. Among the many things she talked about (I’ve never heard the word “vagina” used so many times in the space of two and a half hours) was the fact that she doesn’t do her Christmas shopping until about four days before Christmas. 

    Every year, I think “this year, I’m going to get organized and do all my shopping by August.” And every year, I’m still scrambling on December 23rd. This is part of the beauty of Heathentide. In addition to being a holiday for everyone, it lasts from one full moon to the next—28 to 30 days. If you forgot it was coming up, it’s okay. You’ve still got nearly a month! 

    This also isn’t the kind of holiday where you have to buy anything for anyone. The world is drowning in a sea of trash, and the amount of stuff that we buy as gifts doesn’t help. Media cudgels us over the head with the idea that the only way to show your affection for someone is to buy them something. People spend money they can’t afford on holiday gifts. How many gifts have you received that ended up either in the trash or at the back of the closet, to only make an appearance when the gift giver visits? 

    When we at Zoetic Press think about our Heathentide traditions, those traditions don’t involve buying more stuff. They involve self care, expressing our appreciation for the world around us, and uplifting other people. 

    The best part of traditions like “compliment a stranger on their shoes” or “thank the cashier at the grocery store” is that you don’t have to limit that gift to a single recipient. What if you kept giving those gifts to everyone, day after day, week after week, month after month? You might make someone’s otherwise-crappy day a little bit better. You might make a new friend. You might make your corner of the world a nicer place. What better gift could you possibly give?

    Li Quintana
    Publisher
    Zoetic Press

L. Acadia

Forget Tattoos

L. has writing published in Kenyon Review, New Orleans Review, Strange Horizons, and trampset. She is an assistant professor of literary studies at National Taiwan University.

Vincenzo Anastasia

Moon Star

Vincenzo’s poems have appeared in a Writerscorp anthology, Minarets, and on bus shelters in downtown San Francisco. He lives in Connecticut.

  • Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?
    Growing up, every year teachers would call my parents to complain about how little I paid attention in class because I was drawing. By no means am I good at it, but it’s always served as a practice of meditation for me. I’ve since turned it into a side business on Etsy, drawing crappy versions of album cover art and pasting them on shirts, and sometimes I post sketches like visual poems on my Instagram (@vincenzowrites) . I also dabble in photography and filmmaking.

    How has your view of the creative process changed since you first started?
    I thought I hated reading as a child, so I began writing stories to entertain myself. It wasn’t until late in middle school that I learned I just wasn’t given the right books to read by my teachers. In that sense, the act of writing was necessary for me to build my own belief in a world that was exciting to live in. Heavy pressure for a child. And I don’t believe this process has changed much at all for me. Every poem or line of prose is another effort at reminding the reader of how to look at the world in a way that makes one grateful to observe it and to exist.

    Did you have formal training in literature/art? What ways do you continue your creative education?
    When I was in college in Chicago, they taught workshops in a way that forced many pages out of us, but every writer started sounding the same. It reminds me of the current question rounding the internet: “When did we stop making architecture beautiful?” The program’s methods were the equivalent of the housing industry mass producing boxed tiny homes, but losing the touches that made buildings a joy to take in. The structure of our stories was there, and it made a comfortable home for a plot, but there were no signs of a person with personality living in it. I walked away from the school with some useful techniques for developing stories, but it’s the act of exploring my own literary curiosity that keeps me growing now. It can be as simple as coming across a beautiful poem about blueberries that makes me say, “I should write a poem about a fruit I love.”

    What is your biggest creative doubt?
    It’s always, do I belong in this space? But it also serves as a compass to write with the intention of deserving a place in this space. Not only by allowing myself to explore critical subject matter, but of trying to heighten my skills in the craft of writing by studying those who came before me.  

    What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
    I had a funny moment (in a college I will not name) with a professor who was trying to prepare me for the quest of writing a feature-length screenplay. She took turns asking everyone in the class our log lines and helping to make sure we knew deep in our spirit what we were writing toward. When it was my turn, I explained my plot with thorough detail, believing I had a better grasp on the entire structure of my story than most other students, but she disagreed. She kept hitting me with, “I think there’s something else here.” As the weeks continued and she allowed others to begin their screenplay, she held me back with the same refrain: “There’s something else.” I understand that she was trying to get me to go deeper… to understand what I was trying to understand about myself in writing the story. But I believe writing the damn thing is what helps us go deeper, and you don’t have to understand why you’re writing something until you’re in the middle of it, holding a map home in the dark with no flashlight, reading it between cracks of lightning.

    Do you have a dedicated or preferred place to work? How does it influence the way you work?
    I never was the type to write in cafes until recently. I’m naturally an observer when in public, so I find it helps to have an external stimulant that I must force myself to look away and back at the page. It sounds counterintuitive, but I don’t question what works. I also love having the kind of friend whose house I can come over and write while they do their work too, both of us in silence.

    Is there an overarching theme to your body of work, or is each piece a new exploration?
    I’m sure others could easily point out the overarching themes in my work to me, but I personally think I go through phases based on what I’m reading that season. Sometimes I might explore writing by Chinese Mountain poets and suddenly I’m writing minimally with descriptions of nature. A month later I could be reading Connecticut poets and now I’m writing about my hometown and the people from my old neighborhoods.

    When you begin a new piece of work, where do you start?
    From a place of deep yearning. Always from yearning.  

    If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
    Engineering. I’d love to have the ability to convert an old junker car into a sleek electric vehicle.

Ann Calandro

The Third Place

Ann’s artwork has appeared in literary journals, in the 2023 New Jersey Arts Annual, and exhibited at Phillips Mill, the Monmouth Museum, the Biggs Museum of American Arts. 

Henry Cecchini

The Resurrection of Fiver Delacroix

Henry is a student living in New York. They write about ecology, bodies, and nightmares.

  • Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?
    I love visual art. Over the past year I've made sketches, digital drawings, linoleum prints, ceramics, textile pieces, a couple of short films, and a mural. I dabble in video game design and even what might be called music. Hypertext fiction is one of my favorite alternate forms to use, although I resent programming. My more interactive works can be found here.

    Did you have formal training in literature/art? What ways do you continue your creative education?
    I just completed my bachelor's degree in English with a creative writing pathway. I don't intend to do a master's degree; I remain unconvinced that there's as much virtue in formal/institutional training as is commonly claimed. I continue my education as a writer by reading, practicing, discussing, and analyzing fiction—as well as poetry, ecology, other languages, destroyed/incomplete/scavenged communications, and noise.

    Do you have a dedicated or preferred place to work? How does it influence the way you work?
    I have no dedicated work space but I will write just about anywhere, as long as it's not too busy and I'm not too exhausted (or hungry). Spare rooms, public transit, beds, airplanes, couches, parties... often I'll work on stories in the notes app on my phone in the break room at work. I usually prefer writing on my computer, but when I don't have it on me I use a notebook and transfer the results later. Writing things down with a pen and paper helps me work through questions of plot and structure and purpose, whereas typing lends itself to fluidity and ease of editing. This haphazard approach may reflect the way I construct a piece: chunkwise, a few fragments at once, then moving on to an entirely different section.

    Is there an overarching theme to your body of work, or is each piece a new exploration?
    Isolation, buildings, systems, insects, growth, ...? Currently I'm interested in living things engineered into technologies. I'm always writing about violence, particularly the destruction of the body seen from within the body. Neural sublimes—agony, overwhelm, revelation. For the past few years I've been iterating on a theme of psychic powers. I don't believe in them but I do think we as a species should be working toward hive consciousness somehow.

    When you begin a new piece of work, where do you start?
    Always the setting. Landscape, structures, ecoregion, temperature, how wet or dry it is. The scent and feeling of the air. What sources of light are present in the space.

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

Muze/N Chu

The Water Fairy

Muze enjoys cooking, flailing around on the bass guitar, and practicing Japanese. You can find them on BlueSky @muzetrigger.bsky.social where they write the fantasy flash serial #DiaryOfNana.

  • Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create? 
    I'm also a musician! Currently, I know how to play the piano, trumpet, drumset, bass guitar, and viola, though viola is the only one I can play decently. Way back in high school and undergrad I also used to compose (very bad) musical themes, but I never have the time for that anymore. Lately, I've also been making some post-it Teto's and posting them on my BlueSky. Again, it's nothing impressive, but it gives me a lot of joy to be able to draw something cute and share it with people.

    How has your view of the creative process changed since you first started?
    I used to think I had an endless number of ideas and could pump out words like crazy. Nowadays, I really struggle with finding those ideas and words. I think that's a pretty common sentiment with writers as they get older, either because we don't have time, energy, or we've just gotten pickier about the quality of our work. But because of that, I often treasure the work I am able to get done now. Even if it never becomes a full story or anything worth shopping around to places, I like having words that are just for me too. In that sense, I think I've stopped viewing writing as raw output, which is nice (though it's still frustrating!).

    What author or artist’s popularity do you find confusing/inexplicable?
    Not really. To me, a lot of things that get swept into popularity are there entirely by chance. Of course, there are many popular things that absolutely deserve to be adored, but I think there are even more works that deserve the same kind of recognition that never get a chance to thrive. After being a reader, an editor, and a submitter myself, I've seen the volume of stories out there and the fact that some work becomes wildly popular feels more like a validation of probability than anything else. There's always a lottery winner; that doesn't mean everyone will win the lotto. Then again, I'm the kind of person who believes in intelligent life on other planets, so make of that what you will.

    Did you have formal training in literature/art? What ways do you continue your creative education?
    I do. I graduated from Kenyon College with a Bachelors in English, though I think they only made a full creative writing major the year after I graduated. I'm also a grad student in Portland State's MFA program, though to be frank, I think a lot of "writing education" isn't actually about writing but learning everything around writing, like giving and receiving critique, editing, and submitting. Those aren't really "writing" per se. They're more like handing you a user's manual for a chainsaw so you can do the actual learning yourself once you're out of class.

    What is your biggest creative doubt? 
    I'm not sure if it's purely a creative doubt, but I often wonder if I belong in the community, multiple communities actually. When you're surrounded by all these cool writers and ideas, it can be very overwhelming. I think nowadays, it's less imposter syndrome and more "am I actually contributing enough to this group? Am I reading enough? Am I actually supporting these writers I like?"

    What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
    Cut out all the adverbs in your writing. Similarly, cut out all the adjectives in your writing. I get why people give this advice. Strong verbs and nouns hit way harder than piling on "very" or "really", but when you really look at how many words those parts of speech contain, you realize how ridiculous the advice is. It's like when people tell me "I don't like pronouns!" Buddy, you just used one.

    Do you have a dedicated or preferred place to work? How does it influence the way you work?  
    I do! I used to struggle a lot with just sitting down to write, but carving out a space for writing has really helped me. Strangely enough though, my workspace is my bed. Instead of reading to go to sleep, I'll write until I'm ready to fall unconscious. But I guess it's not actually that unexpected? When I was a teen, I'd craft a lot of fanfic scenarios in my head while trying to fall asleep, so this is probably just an extension of that. 

    I do think the kinds of stories I write tend to be dark, claustrophobic, or dreamy if we're talking about influence though. The idea for "Immortals" actually came to me in a dream and "Like a Night of Falling Stars" starts and ends during the night.

    Is there an overarching theme to your body of work, or is each piece a new exploration?
    I mentioned it in my last answer, but I think most stories I write tend to take place during the night or have very prominent nighttime scenes. I also feel they're a bit claustrophobic and focused on what happens when people are put in tight spaces. Sometimes that's physically, sometimes it's emotionally, and sometimes, it's just because of the length of a work. Incidentally, I really love my weighted blanket, so maybe my bed workspace really is affecting my writing.

    When you begin a new piece of work, where do you start?
    This is going to be a boring answer, but really, just with the general idea of the story. What is a setup that grabs my attention? I'll stumble into that and then I try to thread that idea with an opening I like and see where it pivots. Oftentimes when I start with wanting to write a specific scene or wanting to have a particular message, I'll focus too hard on those details and wind up just writing that scene or a narrativized thought experiment instead of an actual story.

    If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
    I don't think I'd take up a new hobby actually. Rather, I'd like to spend a lot more time with the hobbies I already have. More drawing, more music, and more reading would honestly fix me I think (I hope).

Sarah Connell

Inquiline

Sarah is the author of Project Awakening. Her stories have been published across the world. Her favorite things include quilting, hiking and growing obscure vegetables in her garden. 

Esther Lee Deitch

Nature Boy

Esther is a neurodivergent artist and writer whose work has appeared in Matriart, Montana Mouthful, miniskirt magazine, Great Lakes Review, and The Fabulist.

  • Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?
    Other types of art I create: I went to art school, which influences my writing because it helped me strengthen my imagination and learn how to express it. At the moment I’m doing a series of small drawings with colored pastels on wonderfully textured handmade paper that my friend made. I actually gave up on visual art for a long time, but last year I started doing illustrations for my stories that are not yet published, and it grew from there. To counter the dark and disturbing things happening in the world, I feel a need to make art that’s full of color and light and fragility and hope, whether it’s a story or a picture. Also I sing a lot, at home.

    How has your view of the creative process changed since you first started?
    How my view of the creative process has changed: I don’t think literary, non-genre writing ever made sense to me. I always loved stories with magical elements, which is how I’ve always experienced the world, but when I was young I tried to write what I thought were more serious stories, grown-up style, which leave out all that childish magic. Now I write and draw for the inner child in grown-ups. It’s our inner children who are going to save the world. Grown-ups are incapable of doing that.

    Did you have formal training in literature/art? What ways do you continue your creative education?
    My training and how I continue my education: I went to university, and I only took one course in literature but I learned how to write essays and I’ve applied that knowledge to writing stories. Also I went to art school, where I learned a lot about the creative process and discipline and structure and developing ideas and solving problems creatively, all of which apply to writing. I continue my creative education by paying attention to what other artists are doing, reading and listening and looking, in music and visual art as well as both fiction and non-fiction, though like everything, non/fiction is really more of a spectrum than a binary thing.

    Do you have a dedicated or preferred place to work? How does it influence the way you work?
    Where I prefer to work and how it influences the way I work: Since I’m an ambivert, I need the stimulation of having other people around when I write first drafts, but they have to be people who will mostly ignore me. Editing and tweaking I can do at home on my computer, but for the most deeply creative production, the kind that fills a blank page, I need the silent camaraderie of parallel play that I find in certain coffee shops and food courts. I don’t carry a computer with me, so I write first drafts with pen and paper, but I would do that anyway because I need to see my own handwriting. Last year I started a series of small drawings, and since they’re portable, I also work on those in coffee shops and food courts, where I find physical and spiritual nourishment to feed my little grey cells, as my buddy Hercule Poirot liked to say.

    Is there an overarching theme to your body of work, or is each piece a new exploration?
    Overarching theme(s) vs new explorations, in my work: I’d say each piece is a new exploration of my overarching themes. I loved printmaking, in art school, but I did not like the idea of making an edition of identical prints. I wanted to do something a little different with each one. I also have a hard time when I’m asked to name writers whose work is similar to mine (agents often want this). I can tell you which writers I love and who influenced me - including Kurt Vonnegut Jr, Madeleine L’Engle, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Terry Pratchett, Agatha Christie, and Charles Dickens - but I don’t think I write like them or anyone else. My overarching theme is finding a home in the universe. Also that all creatures are my family. Also that there’s often more truth in “fiction” than in “facts”. And of course magic. So several overarching themes.

    When you begin a new piece of work, where do you start?
    Starting a new piece of work: I always need a good opening sentence to anchor the story, like “Marley was dead, to begin with.” (Dickens’ A Christmas Carol) Also I prefer to have a title, usually the name of a song that will be my soundtrack to set the mood of the story. I don’t always know why I’ve picked a particular song, and sometimes I find out more about the relationship between title and story, as the story develops. Occasionally I will need to change the title. At the moment I have a story that I’ve been trying to write for months and have started several times, under several different titles, but I just can’t seem to get to the end of it. It’s part of a series about some people who work for a magical circus. I’ve drawn a couple of illustrations for it too, but it’s like a donkey that won’t move.

Hugh Findlay

Nurture

Hugh was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2020 for poetry, and the Best Microfiction Anthology 2024, he is in the third trimester of life and hopes y’all like his stuff. 

Violeta Garza

Inheritance/Yo Fuí Tu Abuela

Violeta work can be seen in Anti-Heroin Chic, Acentos Review, and The ASP Bulletin. Their debut poetry chapbook Brava was released in September 2025 by First Matter Press. 

KJ Hannah Greenberg

Summer Ride

KJ’s self-illustrated poetry collections are: Miscellaneous Parlor Tricks, Word Magpie, Subrogation, and One-Handed Pianist. Her coffee table book is Real and Otherwise.

  • Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create? 
    I write and have had published: a musical, novels, essay collections, fiction collections, poetry collection, and poetry and art collections. I fashion and have had published digital paintings and photography. I also weave baskets, hand build pottery, and more. I used to play oboe, too.

    How has your view of the creative process changed since you first started?  
    I think I'm both more disciplined and more chilled.

    What is your biggest creative doubt?  
    I sometimes question whether I should focus more on morality and less on nature's beauty.

    Do you have a dedicated or preferred place to work? How does it influence the way you work?
    My office. For decades, I've had a space dedicated to work, even if it's been a few feet partitioned by a wall or the smallest space with a door within an apartment.

    Is there an overarching theme to your body of work, or is each piece a new exploration?
    Each piece is an exploration.

    When you begin a new piece of work, where do you start?
    Depends. BH, I am so filled with ideas that I have both tacit and electronic folders that are filled with kernels awaiting development. Consequently, after an initial idea dump and after structuring my ideas and refining the diction that contains them, I rewrite many times. Rewriting is the heart of writing. 

    As per images, if I see something intriguing outside, I take snaps and then edit at home. alternatively, if I am creating a digital painting, I usually free flow.

Elizabeth Gunn

Carbon

Elizabeth is the Dean of the School of Arts, Sciences, and Business at Nevada State University. She writes poetry and fiction in Henderson, Nevada, where she and her wife live with their three pups.

Matt A. Hanson

Matt A. Hanson (Untitled By Anonymous) writes essays on art and literature for such outlets as Jacobin, ArtAsiaPacific, World Literature Today, Words Without Borders, Artforum and many others. 

  • Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?
    I'm an amateur musician. I learned percussion styles traditional to the Eastern Mediterranean while living in Canada, where I collaborated with many musicians with immigrant backgrounds from Vietnam, Iran, Senegal and elsewhere. I continue to practice the darbuka and bendir or frame drum and also enjoy playing improvised piano and guitar. I have three different woodwind instruments, the shakuhachi Japanese bamboo flute, Xaphoon bamboo saxophone and the ney flute, made of a single reed and common in Turkish, Egyptian and Persian music.

    How has your view of the creative process changed since you first started?
    The creative process changed for me since I began sometime around my eleventh year because I've learned to consider multiple perspectives, enjoy a sense of patience and reflection especially over the years as I look back on work and partake in a kind of dialogue with my younger self in the same way that what I write today is in many ways a love letter to the future. I've since enjoyed a degree of public recognition, but have realized that that does not translate into feelings of success.

    What author or artist’s popularity do you find confusing/inexplicable?
    I'm baffled by the Turkish author Zülfü Livaneli's prolific appearance in English translation and have reviewed a number of his novels to this effect, wondering why a more diverse cast of writers does not appear for anglophone readers. Livaneli is mostly known as a famous leftwing singer but also a novelist whose prose, as translated, is generally lackluster, at best mediocre. Still, he has a major following because of his cultural precedence and perhaps in the original Turkish the writing is slightly better.

    Did you have formal training in literature/art? What ways do you continue your creative education?
    As a first-year university student I enrolled in a creative writing program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and then continued to pursue a comparative literature degree as part of a study abroad program at the American University in Cairo. I continue to develop my creative education with the editors that I work with on each new piece of writing we produce as a journalist in the field of arts and culture.

    What is your biggest creative doubt?
    My biggest creative doubt is that I will not be able to write a commercially viable, literary novel or produce works of literature that are respected as such.

    Do you have a dedicated or preferred place to work? How does it influence the way you work? 
    I share a studio with my wife. She's a ceramic artist and her light-flooded garden workshop is very conducive to the fulfillment of my writerly passion. I wrote an essay about the space. That, and our home has a balcony-adjacent office with a big wooden desk and a spacious windows where trees and birds dance together all day under intermittent changes in the sunlight, rain, snow, clouds here on the shores of the Marmara Sea in Istanbul's Anatolian district of Moda.

Radian Hong

Ghost

Radian’s work has appeared in Diode Poetry Journal, Necessary Fiction, The Shore, The Coachella Review, and other journals, and has been recognized by The Poetry Society of the UK.

Claire Lawrence

The Farmers

Claire’s artwork has appeared many magazines including Inverted Syntax, Auxocardia, Coffin Bell, Intima: A Journal on Narrative Medicine.

Ethan Lee

Serpenti(n)e

Ethan is an artist and anthropologist interested in how art can express and augment the human experience. He has been published in Beyond Words Literary Magazine and Variant Literature.

Nicole Mensick

Scene of an old woman tending her garden

Nicole is a new poet from the San Francisco Bay Area living and working in the Northern Sacramento Valley. She is seldom certain and often learning.

Irina Tall Novikova

Untitled

Irina’s work has been published in Gupsophila, Harpy Hybrid Review, Little Literary Living Room and others. Her short story was included in the collection “The 50 Best Short Stories.” 

Amabilis O’Hara

Leave No Trace

Amabilis has published in  Extrasensory Overload: an anthology of speculative excess, Heartlines Spec, Whispers from Beyond, and HWA’s Poetry Showcase XI. 

  • Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?
    I sketch characters, paint ceramic ornaments as gifts, and scrawl sidewalk chalk cities with my kid. I also bake gluten free desserts. Lemon quickbread, frangipane tarts, carrot cake, and pumpkin roll are some of my favorites.

    How has your view of the creative process changed since you first started? 
    In the beginning - for all of life's endeavors, including creative pursuits - I often strove to impress other people, believing that tightly controlled perfection, success, and competence were how you gained love and fulfilment. Now I nourish my soul by writing down all the silly, vulnerable, messy-human absurdities that tickle my self-indulgent fancy.

    What author or artist’s popularity do you find confusing/inexplicable?
    I don't find any author's popularity confusing or inexplicable. There is a great diversity of people in this world, and whoever someone is and whatever they write, there is bound to be someone else out there who connects to them and their work in some way.

    Did you have formal training in literature/art? What ways do you continue your creative education?
    The most formal education I think I've had in literature was Mrs. McVetty's eighth grade Language Arts class. She was an intense teacher and I'm lucky to have been her student. I still reference a list of notes that I took when I was twelve! Aside from public education and required writing/art courses in college for my Geology degree, my creative education has consisted of online workshops, conferences, critique partners, craft related books or blogs, and supportive library writing groups.

    My M.S. in a STEM field may not have been literary or art focused, but it helped me to be more inventive by sharpening my curiosity and putting me in difficult (sometimes even dangerous) situations that required quick out-of-the-box thinking. It also takes a lot of creativity and graphic design know-how to write technical reports in an engaging way and to make aesthetically pleasing and easy to understand maps, figures, and graphs for research manuscripts.

    I would add that simply living my life in bold and exciting ways - traveling, doing hard things like facing the things I'm afraid of, seeking out novel experiences, actively learning, and going out of my introverted comfort zone to meet and connect with other people - is the best practice I have ever engaged in to nourish my creativity.

    What is your biggest creative doubt?
    I always worry that I will perpetuate unconscious bias toward marginalized groups or individuals with my writing.

    I try to include characters who are different from me, but I don't always do this because I have fears that I will somehow harmfully stereotype or that I may not portray a character in a way that comes across authentically to readers that share a character's experiences or identity. To address this, I've been taking workshops and reading resources on how to portray authentic characters, avoid harmful stereotypes, and what language is best to use or excise from prose.

    What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
    Never self-reject. It sounds like great advice, especially because, off the top of my head, there are at least four of my acceptances where I had almost either: 

    1) not sent a piece at all
    2) later considered withdrawing my piece because I was unsure of it

    I think it is important to be brave and vulnerable, but the "never" part of this common writing adage is what I question. There is at least one important instance where I wish I had trusted my own gut and not given in to the siren call of a more experienced writer's well-meaning push of encouragement to pitch something that I hadn't finished yet.

    These days, I try to toss things at slush piles without overthinking whether I'm good enough, while also heeding my gut and holding back when it says I'm not ready. I'm not sure if that distinction makes sense, but to me, there's a fine, but often very solid line, between the two.

    Do you have a dedicated or preferred place to work? How does it influence the way you work?
    As a goblin of chaos, I work wherever and whenever I can find the space and time. This means I'm often either a somewhat slow and disjointed worker on longer pieces. If I'm on a roll, though, I can expel a quick almost-ready poem or two in the space of a load of laundry at the laundromat.

    I'll usually whip out my phone to jot down notes or draft a poem whenever I'm struck by inspiration, or if I have a moment to breathe. The usual places I draft new content are: in bed with insomnia at 3 am, waiting rooms, the bus stop, or, and I'm sorry if this is TMI and ruins my poetry mystique, but I've written some truly glorious lines perched bored atop thrones of porcelain.

    Once I've got a rough draft on my phone, I then email it to myself so I can do final edits on my sticker-coated laptop at the dining room table.

    Is there an overarching theme to your body of work, or is each piece a new exploration?
    A bit of both. Each piece has its own unique facets. There are, however, many themes that center my work. A search for home, community, and loving-kindness. The devastation of trauma and abuse. Rejection vs connection. Internalized phobias. The journey to self-acceptance, love, and expressing oneself authentically. These are all common threads that often appear in my work.

    When you begin a new piece of work, where do you start?
    My poetry often begins with one of the following: a single visceral image, two words I enjoy the sound of together, a traumatic event in my life, a prompt, or a fun pun idea for a title that I then flesh out and explore. I often decide first what emotion I want the reader to walk away with at the end of the piece, then craft my way backwards to set the final line up for maximum punch.

    If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
    Managing the campaigns of as many progressive local government candidates as possible :)

Ojo Olaniyi

Triplets (Èta Òkò)

Olaniyi was one of the ten artist featured for Nigeria Visual art world tour (NIVATOUR) of Egypt in 2010, organized by National gallery of art.

Oniyishi Chukwuebuka Freedom

Immortality

Freedom’s works are in Eye To The Telescope: (non)binaries, Harrow House, Northern Writers Forum, The Port Harcourt Literary Review, and Wherein The World.

  • Do you use a pseudonym? Why or why not?
    I write under my real name, Onyishi Chukwuebuka Freedom. I feel strongly that poetry is inseparable from my identity and the experiences that continue to shape it. A pseudonym, I fear, might distance my work from the personal and startling truths I strive to honor and share.

    What first motivated you to write/create art?
    I started writing because I saw millions of voices and dreams in my country shrouded in silence. I grew up watching some highly talented and gifted children around me struggle to dig out their buried visions, trapped in the bleeding graves of a nation’s false political promises. This encounter immediately instilled in me a deep understanding of the injustices and losses that surround us. Writing became a way to document these lives, confront the darknesses, and preserve every ounce of stories that might otherwise be lost.

    If you could have any writer/artist, living or dead, as a mentor, who would you choose? 
    Joseph Christopher Okigbo, for many reasons. His poetry carries immense power, balancing profound lyricism with deep engagement in social and historical realities. He embodies the dual role of witness and conscience-bearer, reflecting both personal insight and collective memory.

    Is there a specific period of history whose art or writing you admire? Why?
    I am particularly drawn to post-Biafran War Nigerian literature and poetry. Writers from that era convey resilience, memory, and collective experience, showing how language can preserve history while expressing complex emotional truths. Their work reminds me that a writer can be both witness and wonder and even the color of the night stars look so beautiful like us.

    What is one part of your creation process that’s harder for you?
    Determining when a poem is finished is always challenging. I revise repeatedly, refining line, rhythm, and imagery. My perfectionist spirit has been both a guide and a burden, leaving me mentally drained at times as I review each piece countless times to achieve the best outcome.

    Talk about the moment you knew you wanted to be a creator.
    I realized I wanted to create when I saw that the stories, dreams, and memories in my community could vanish if left unrecorded. Poetry became my way to preserve voices, bear witness, and shape lived experience with care for the people and histories behind each story.

    Do you have a piece that you created early in your career that makes you cringe? Will you ever go back and fix it so it can be submitted somewhere?
    Like many early works, some pieces no longer reflect my current style or understanding. I view them with compassion, as part of my growth as a poet. Revisiting them allows me to honor the effort and curiosity that brought me here while learning from how my craft has evolved.

    What is your biggest creative doubt?
    I sometimes wonder if my work communicates beyond my immediate context, if readers elsewhere can fully engage with it. Yet I trust that poetry grounded in empathy and attentive craft can resonate across cultures, carrying care for both subject and audience.

    You’re stranded on a desert island – what three creative tools do you want with you?
    A journal to teach a lion how to respect writers, a pen to tell the world that a writer too is a carpenter—but instead of carving wood, he creates words that build nations—and a solar-powered music player to show the universe that music and writing were long married to my existence before I was born

    What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
    Early on, I was told, “Write only what you know.” On the surface, it seemed sensible, but I soon realized that limiting myself to personal experience would shrink the worlds I could imagine. Poetry thrives on empathy, curiosity, and the courage to explore lives and ideas beyond one’s own. While personal truth is essential, creativity often demands stepping into spaces you’ve never lived in—and learning to write them responsibly.

Stephen Page

Batman and Robin

Stephen has 4 books of poetry published. He loves my wife, road trips, playing his electric bass, and wandering the streets of Buenos Aires. Friend call him a space case.

Mandira Pattnaik

500 Years Between Latitudes of Love

Mandira’s work has been in Wigleaf Top50, The McNeese Review and The Rumpus. She is the author of Glass/Fire, Girls Who Don’t Cry and Where We Set Our Easel

Camelia Paul

Fire of Creation

Camelia’s is into environmental humanities and animal studies. She is also an award-winning visual artist with her poetry and art regularly appearing in magazines and anthologies.

  • Did you have formal training in literature/art? What ways do you continue your creative education?
    I had been introduced to art at a very young age, even before I spoke my first word. Since then, I have been inseparable from my drawing paper and art materials, and I continue experimenting with visual art in various forms. While I may not possess the formal training in fine arts or years of experience that some artists do, I approach my craft with passion, and a thirst for growth and fulfilment. As for literature, I have a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University, India, and now I am pursuing grad school at the Department of Comparative and World Literature, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

    I believe my creative education’s gonna run till I breathe my last, and yet shall leave me half-educated.

    What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
    That one piece of creative advice I received was to take a break from all that black ink I use for my art, and switch to other colors, like brown. It initially sounded like a good idea, but I struggled (still struggle) a lot producing doodles and sketches in a different ink. I identify with the black, and I cannot give it up just like that. Although there are a variety of colors that occasionally show up in my inkwork, black has, and shall always remain the protagonist.

    Do you have a dedicated or preferred place to work? How does it influence the way you work?  
    Actually, I do. I prefer to create art in a place that’s got proper lighting and just the right amount of silence, for I cannot stand noise. I usually create art when I’m on my own at home.I feel being in my comfort zone does justice to the work I put on paper.

    Contrarily, I have observed myself creating extraordinary (only to me, though) art while in a lot of mental pain.

    Is there an overarching theme to your body of work, or is each piece a new exploration?
    Creating art, for me, is saadhana (passion), and release. It is a way to navigate fantasy and innovation, allowing my subconscious to guide me to make designs, patterns, shapes, and symbols that carry personal significance. Many of my paintings take shape in my mind in waking dreams that span for days, and even months. When I awake with a painting that is usually close to being finished, I put my ideas on canvas or paper. The shades of colors, and brush and flow find their way onto the surface.

    Although much of my work tells a unique story, my creative range is wide, and extends across various mediums. From time to time, I revert to realism and Nature – its vast expanse of flora and fauna – sometimes inserting real elements into semi-abstract backgrounds. My watercolors and acrylics are executed in hues of brilliant color and intricate patterns. No matter how many paintings or sketches I have completed, each one of them is still an experiment to me. My art invites viewers to engage with its imperfection, to find meaning in the seemingly random, and to rediscover the joy of spontaneous creation. I try to reach beyond myself by creating a mental challenge to combine materials that are unlikely to be combined, play with colors that are unlikely to go well, and ensconce spatial arrangements that are otherwise surprising – then turn these unlikely components into a finished piece of art that brings fulfilment to my heart.

    When you begin a new piece of work, where do you start?
    I usually begin a new piece of work without feeling “inspired,” but in its stead, unwavering passion before attempting to create or do something. Until my creation takes shape, its overwhelming absence from the world I inhabit drives or “inspires” me to create it. I have never experienced the need to go looking for inspiration when I have always been surrounded by Nature. I am awestruck, obsessed with, and consumed by Nature.

    If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
    I’d be a raptor specialist. I wouldn’t call it a hobby, though.

Shan Powell

The Silent Madness of Whales

Shan’s writing is in Augur, The Deadlands, On Spec, and more. When she’s not writing or making things, she wrangles chinchillas and gets filthy in the woods.

  • If you could have any writer/artist, living or dead, as a mentor, who would you choose? 
    If I could have any writer as a mentor, I'd love to be able to go back in time to mentor myself. I had a decades-long fallow period that I could have skipped if I had a better clue about how to approach the publishing process. I was a strong writer in my youth, but didn't understand the critiques I was getting in my university writing courses. I would have told myself to seek out co-writing groups and critique groups, because these have been instrumental at keeping myself accountable. Of course, publishing was a lot trickier before everything went digital. Back then, everything had to be sent through snail mail, and you had to include a stamped, self-addressed envelope with every submission. And since most publishers were in the United States and I live in Canada, that made it all the more tricky. Even still, I could've had a headstart on self-publishing in the 00s, and that would have been amazing.

    Is there one part of your creation process that’s harder for you? 
    The part of the creation process I find most difficult is finishing a longer piece. With short stories, essays, and poems, it's not so bad. But once I start hitting novelette length and up, I find myself paralyzed by the thought of ending my piece. I'm not sure what causes this mental block, but I'm sure Freud would have something to say about me being anal-retentive.

    Do you have a piece that you created early in your career that makes you cringe? Will you ever go back and fix it so it can be submitted somewhere?
    Oh, do I ever. I went looking through my old documents a while back and happened upon the MFA application package I sent to the University of British Columbia way back in 1994. I shouldn't be too hard on myself because I was a baby writer, but one story in particular gives me the horrors now. I had the beginnings of a novel featuring a young teenage girl who is the victim of incest and runs away from home to become a hero. She tries to seduce a man who helps her, and reading that makes me cringe so hard now. I understand why I wrote it: when I was about 14 years old, a friend of mine had been in a similar situation. She never got away from her abusive father, and she died before she even made it to high school. In writing this, I was trying to give my friend a better future than she got. I don't think I can salvage that story, but I could write something altogether different to honour her. That being said, I did find a story I wrote around 1995. I did a few minor revisions and finally got it published ~30 years later.

    What is your biggest creative doubt?
    Will I be able to survive on my writing? The way the industry is going, probably not, but this doesn't stop me from trying. 

    What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
    I was told I should get an MFA, and I did consider that for a while, but ultimately, I don't think it's necessary for me. I have no intention of becoming a university professor, and I find I'm doing just fine with taking workshops and regularly participating in critique groups. The path will be different for every writer.

    Talk about the moment you knew you wanted to be a creator. 
    I had an awful grade two teacher who used me as the poster-child for how NOT to do things. She always showed my drawings to the class and then told everyone how sloppy and badly-coloured they were, and how everyone must strive to make something better than that. She hated me in particular, and hit me with a strap even when I hadn't done anything wrong. But one time, I wrote a story in her class that she reluctantly admitted was excellent. And that's when I realized that I must be a pretty good writer if I could startle her out of her hatefulness. Two years later, I won a national writing contest. And the joke is on her, because I also ended up a professional artist.

David Rogers

Window

David’s work has appeared in Star*Line and Daily Science Fiction. His novels The Artifact and The Excalibur Incident are available from Amazon. More at Davidrogersbooks.wordpress.com. 

Jake Schick

Eating

Jake’s work is published in Water the Sun, Points in Case, and The Barnes & Noble Review. More at www.jake-schick.com  

  • Do you use a pseudonym? Why or why not?
    I will when I find the right name.I have always felt weird about names. People have called me “jake” most my life, but I have no connection to that word. I like the idea of giving myself a new legal name, a feminine name or more gender-neutral name, and I also like the idea of an additional art name/pseudonym. But if I have 5 different names maybe they lose meaning. Or maybe they are all meaningful, but people will want to focus on one to associate me with. But no one is a name. Why think about what other people will do instead of choosing what feels right to me.Maybe we all should have multiple names for different parts of ourselves. But if I can’t find meaning in 1, why have a name at all. I suppose people need to call me something. Or do they.Maybe I’ll change my name to Olivia Rodrigo.

    What first motivated you to write/create art?
    I think I’ve always liked to express feelings and thoughts. Music was probably my first interaction with art, and it felt necessary to explore life through songs and sounds. Dancing has always been a way for me to experience every emotion. I think I started writing as another way to get some energy out of my head and body and onto a page.

    Is there a specific period of history whose art or writing you admire? Why?
    I think 0 to 2025 is a pretty interesting period. I would love to find more “unknown” artists because many of my favorite artists were never well known. It’s exciting to think someone might discover a song by duendita in the year 3315. A few years ago, my partner and I visited Newgrange in Ireland. Some of the stones are carved with megalithic art, and the experience was incredibly emotional and moving. It was special to be transformed by art from a time period that I feel so disconnected from. It made me feel connected.

    You’re stranded on a desert island - what three creative tools do you want with you? 
    Food, shelter, and love.

David Sheskin

Color Blind

David is a writer and artist whose work has been published extensively over the years. Most recently he has appeared in Palooka, Vestal Review, Tampa Review, The Font, and DIAGRAM. 

Sholanke Boluwatife Emmanuel

Untitled

Emmanuel’s work is characterized by its meticulous detail, photorealistic quality, and thought-provoking themes. His artistic style is deeply rooted in his African heritage.

Jacqueline Staikos

The Guardian

Jacqueline has exhibited art in galleries in Toronto, Kingston and in New York City. Her creative process involves working with inks, acrylics, oils and mixed media. 

Alex Swartzentruber

Hot Day Miracle

Alex is a poet based out of Bloomington, Indiana. He has published the poetry collection It’s a Beautiful Day in the Gulch and is co-host of a podcast of the same name. 

Claudia Tong

Clues

Claudia is an artist based in London, dedicated to storytelling and humanity. Her practice runs from painting, illustrations and mixed media to visual computing, photography and music. 

  • What first motivated you to write/create art?
    I was first motivated to create art during COVID, when most activities outside of work, such as theatre, music and football, suddenly disappeared. I was fortunate to start painting. Daily morning runs around my neighbourhood became a serendipity to observe and discover. As I noticed how light, weather and mood transformed familiar streets and corners, I began painting these overlooked moments of beauty using watercolour and ink. Looking back, what began as a casual, self-taught hobby has grown into a serious commitment and evolved into a multifaceted practice across illustration, mixed media, and digital and algorithmic art.

    This video explains my process in detail and introduces my practice from the beginning, presenting my work from 2020 to 2024.

    Is there a specific period of history whose art or writing you admire? Why?
    I am particularly drawn to the Spring and Autumn (春秋, 770BC-481BC) and Warring States (战国 475BC-221BC) periods in ancient China, when diverse schools of philosophy and literature flourished, such as Taoism. The ideas that emerged during this time continue to shape how we think about ethics, nature, society, and the self.

    Inspired by this period, my mixed media practice combines small seal script, an ancient form of Chinese calligraphy, with texts from classical writings of the time, alongside contemporary visual languages. The series creates an open dialogue across time, culture, and artistic traditions.

    Talk about the moment you knew you wanted to be a creator.
    I first felt the thrill of being a creator when my work was exhibited and published in books/magazines. However, the real moment of realisation came when I noticed I was spending more time and energy on admin tasks than on making new work. That made me see that while the former is important, what I truly love and want to dedicate my time to is the act of creating itself.

    Do you have a piece that you created early in your career that makes you cringe? Will you ever go back and fix it so it can be submitted somewhere?
    Early on, I composed a piano piece for an exhibition I was also helping to curate, which aims to explore the intersection of art and music. After many rounds of discussion around the work, the exhibition, and logistics, etc. the project was ultimately abandoned, and the music was left unfinished without a context.

    A few months later, when I began exploring algorithmic art and creative coding, I revisited that abandoned composition. Rather than feeling apprehensive about its unfinished state, I allowed it to move forward into a new context, pairing it with my computer graphics. That became Colours & Sounds, the audiovisual piece, giving the music a new life and opening up an entirely new direction for my practice. I have carried this approach forward ever since: earlier this year, I was commissioned to create The End of Work, a music video for the intermission of a theatre production.

    What is your biggest creative doubt?
    My biggest creative doubt has two parts. Firstly, I am self-taught and do not have formal art training. Over time, though, creating work and engaging with the art world through exhibitions, publishing, arts organisations, and collaborations (e.g. with Zoetic!) has helped me feel increasingly grounded and integrated.

    Secondly, my practice is diverse, and I sometimes struggle to explain what kind of art I make. I am still navigating when/how to specialise, but I have found that connections often emerge between different parts of my practice, such as algorithmic art and music, allowing new forms to develop. It remains an open question.

    What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
    An accomplished artist once advised me to paint big and to start by copying the masters’ works. It is a solid, time-tested way of learning art, and it was exactly the path he took through art school and found effective.

    For me, however, the advice was not a good fit. I make art in my free time, driven by passion rather than profession, so working with A4/A5 allows me to manage my time well and iterate on a fast pace. While I do refer to the masters for specific ideas or techniques, copying an entire piece would quickly drain my curiosity and motivation. I realised that good advice is not universal, and that understanding your own context is key to making your creative journey work for you.

Jarod “J” Valencia-Cheng

This Garden, My Grave

Jarod focuses on speculative, literary, and slipstream narratives centered in marginalization and structures of power.

  • Do you use a pseudonym? Why or why not? 
    While not a particularly complex one, I use my pseudonym in order to highlight the complexity of my cultural heritage and honor that. At first, I wasn't necessarily interested in using one, but I grew into it once I started sending my work out more frequently. "J" is definitely way easier to remember at coffee shops and in emails, which prevents all the crazy misspellings, and going by a hyphenated version of my mother's maiden name and my father's last name really hits home how I grew up at the intersection of these rich storytelling traditions in Latine and Chinese/Taiwanese culture.

    What first motivated you to write/create art?
    Maybe this is dorky, but I love-love-love dragons and their place in various mythos, so I read a lot of fantasy books about dragons as a kid! Being born in the Year of the Dragon for the Chinese Zodiac didn't help any, either. When I first found out Christopher Paolini, author of the Inheritance Cycle (the Eragon series), was published with Knopf at 19, it blew my tiny mind. Of course, I didn't end up writing a bestselling series of novels at 19 like I dreamed of, but those books were the backbone of my desire to write stories.

    If you could have any writer/artist, living or dead, as a mentor, who would you choose?
    Carmen Maria Machado will always be the dream mentor of mine that I will likely never get to work with (she's too cool and famous LOL)! I read a lot of her short stories when I was doing my undergrad, which was around the same time as my queer awakening, so I always admired how she plays with form and the blending of reality. If I ever had the chance to learn from her, my little gay heart would explode on the spot.

    Is there one part of your creation process that’s harder for you? 
    One particular part of my process that's difficult is finishing the actual story. I was always a short story writer, but I never know when the right time to close out a narrative is, especially when I still have questions about the narrative.  Long-form prose is also difficult for me, so I tend to rely on "the vibes" and the point in a short story where the metaphorical explosion goes off. If I think of it like Mentos in a liter of Sprite, getting to the point where all hell breaks loose is what I try to work towards.

    Do you have a piece that you created early in your career that makes you cringe? Will you ever go back and fix it so it can be submitted somewhere?
    Unfortunately, yes, and I have tried to go back and "fix" it. That piece in particular is hard for me to revise since it has an experimental form and commentary on romance that I don't want to compromise on. I think it deserves to get out there, so I'll probably tackle it for a fourth or fifth time, but I want to make sure that I don't lose the aspects that inspired me to write it the way I did.

    What is your biggest creative doubt?  
    My biggest creative doubt is that my work is just flashy and has no substance! I tend to selfishly write what I want, and play with form or themes to match it, but then I almost always get too into my head about whether this story or art is actually saying something worth listening to.

    What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
    When I think about creative advice that didn't work, I think of many of my rejections that talk about my work not being a good fit for a magazine, and to read more of the offerings from them before submitting again. I write mostly within speculative themes to talk about marginalization to avoid getting too preachy and to look at things from a different "what if" angle, but I learned mostly from reading and writing literary fiction, so my work doesn't fit neatly in generic categories. Every magazine and its editors have their own tastes, and I always want to challenge the notion that strong fiction has a literary bend centered on realism, when those of us with marginalized identities have such a different perspective of what is "real."

Jon Vickers-Jones

8 1/2 in Winter

Jon is a writer, storyteller, painter, scenic designer, director, and creativity instructor from Britain. He has published books of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays, and children’s stories.