Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
Rather naively, I went to art school at Boston University thinking that being a painter is what it means to be an artist. I realized that the type of art taught there focused upon a pretty narrow perspective, and I found the work the faculty used to illustrate great art lacked depth in terms of content and point of view. We studied primarily figure, still life, and landscape painting. For example, I can’t recall learning about women artists or non-Western traditions in studio courses.

Then, I took a photography class with Stephen Frank. Frank famously captured one of the last (and most lasting) images of photographer Diane Arbus. Frank’s eccentric portrait features a profiled Arbus in mid-sentence intensity, one hand holding her photo Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C. (1962), and the other hand blurry in gesticulation.

Diane Arbus’s photographs celebrate the lives of those who many considered outsiders. Her images of the LGBTQ community, sex workers, the differently-abled, the poor, and the disenfranchised are some of the most compelling in the history of art for their straightforward and humanistic gaze. Arbus questioned the notion of ‘normal’ by showing the everyday lives of those traditionally considered ‘not normal.’ Through her accepting eyes, we see adults with disabilities amid joy and laugher, the cavalier freedom of middle-aged nudists in a perfectly appointed living room, and a stripper’s exhausted countenance in a backstage dressing room. Arbus begs questions: Who is ‘normal’? What is ‘normal’? Stephen Frank and Diane Arbus opened my eyes and provided the encouragement I sought to question the world around me.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
People often look at the surface of things and think they understand them. They glance and make assumptions based upon their own experiences, values, and belief systems. It’s typically a very limiting world view based upon a binary of dichotomies – good/bad, smart/dumb, black/white, male/female, important/worthless, etc. I don’t think about the world that way.

I have a friend who always says, “nothing is as bad or as good as it seems.” That statement resonates with me. Most things are far more complex and nuanced than we think. What I hope people take away from my work is related to those ideas. The viewer might think my work is a craft-store jumble, but it’s not that simple. Looking more closely, one finds serious topics discussed. I use frivolous materials and humor to talk about injustice and the devastating results of discrimination, violence, and harassment. I hope the work challenges the viewer to be more compassionate, accepting, and more open to the continuum of human experience.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
Not to be cagey, but it depends. I’m always working by seeking out images and materials I can use in my work. Once I’ve found a compelling image and the vintage handkerchief that works well together chromatically and stylistically, some ideas come to me quickly, and I’m certain about the piece. In those cases, I previsualize the piece, pull together the elements physically, and plan out the execution to integrate the materials visually and for construction purposes. Through trial and error, I’ve learned which part of the construction needs to come first, second, and third. After that, I work feverishly to complete it. I’m excited to see the final piece. Depending on the complexity, the time from previsualization to a finished piece can be 30-60 hours.

Other times, the process takes more time. I experiment with images and materials until a theme and composition emerge. It’s a bit hard to explain except to say an interplay of signs, symbols, words, and meaning play around in my mind’s eye, much like Surrealistic automatism. I allow the subconscious to take over when juxtaposing elements of the composition. When something is finally working, I refine and hone the piece in a very conscious way. So, I have several pieces in process at one time. When something isn’t working, I drop it for a while until something emerges more organically rather than trying to force it.

What does your perfect day look like?
I’m going to have to agree with Cheryl Fraiser on this one. “I’d have to say April 25th. Because it’s not too hot, not too cold, all you need is a light jacket.”

What surprising reactions have you gotten to your work?
In my mid-twenties, I did a series of self-portraits, looking into a mirror doing various things related to grooming such as bleaching facial hair, trimming nose hair, plucking eyebrows, and popping a pimple. It was called the Personal Maintenance Series, and its response ran the gamut from being awarded an NEA individual fellowship to comments expressing utter disgust. After sending the work for consideration, one letter I received from a gallery stands out. The response had three letters typed at the bottom of my original cover letter, “Yuk.” I still have that letter; it makes me laugh to this day.

Another series called Post-Catholic Relics ignited quite a firestorm with protests, letters to the editor, editorial cartoons, threats, and an investigation into whether or not I had violated public decency laws (it was ruled I did not). The work was about my experiences and views about how the Catholic church looked sexual identity. I was surprised by how challenged and outraged people became over it.

When you challenge stereotypes and point out hypocrisy, people tend to get bent out of shape. I remember being surprised by some nasty comments made in a guest book and in letters to the editor about works from my series, Wearing a Woman’s Life. One of the pieces chronicled how my body changed during my pregnancy. The nude photos were quite matter-of-fact and clinical. Some man (I forget his name) angrily wrote that he didn’t want to see my pregnant body; it was ugly. It took me a while to figure that one out. I finally realized why he was mad. I wasn’t presenting my body for his pleasure or titillation; the image was for me and how I felt. He had a problem understanding women aren’t objects.

After these and other surprising reactions over the years, I’ve almost come to expect it. People are funny how they reveal their prejudices. With my work, I’m often challenging people with the materials I use because they don’t support the hierarchy of what is acceptable “fine art.” I eschew painting, sculpture, drawing, and printmaking. So, people often, especially with my latest body of work, Veronica’s Cloths, dismiss the work as a 4-H craft project or the like. One editor wrote about the works by saying, at first, he thought someone made him a nice pillow, but then he looked closer and realized it wasn’t that at all. He called it an uncanny valley -- you think you’re getting something sweet and pretty, but then you’re ambushed with something serious.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
Rather than a single film or visual work, I’d say I’m more interested in a film genre and particular types of stories. I love classic screwball comedies with an underestimated female protagonist, who people eventually realize has a lot to offer and is more intelligent than everyone thought. I also love films based upon true-life stories of a complex underdog who prevails against all odds through dogged resilience, unbridled courage, and strength of character. Perhaps that also explains my love of vernacular art of all types. I’m inspired by people who succeed by presenting their authentic selves without pretension. Something is compelling about people with courage of conviction and a clear sense of self.

When I shape a story, it’s with those elements in mind. I start with the unexpected and undervalued materials and then deliver a narrative that’s raw, direct, and unbridled in its conviction. I like the idea that viewers don’t necessarily see the messages at first. It’s unexpected, surprising, and a bit of tongue in cheek.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
Yes, constantly. It’s only very recently that I’ve had full days in which to focus on my creative practice. Previously, I’d work each evening, well into the night, juggling family and work commitments and squeezing in work when I could. Most of my social life is online, with fellow creatives, often in the US. This helps as it means I can share and discuss work at crazy times when most UK-ers are asleep.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
That is such a great question. The first author to broaden my worldview is an academic author, Maha Bali, whose work with Equity Unbound I find constantly inspiring. The first artist would be the surrealist painter Remedios Varo, whose work I first saw when I was about 14, and who created an amazing space between real and imagined - and was also the first female surrealist I'd come across. I love that she made her sculpture, De Homo Rodans, from chicken and poultry bones.

Who do you think is the most misunderstood historical figure?
I think all of our histories are probably misunderstood and misrepresented. We get very Western-skewed, very male-dominated, very binary, very hierarchical notions of history shown to us, all linear representations of history. So I guess I’d say that all the figures of history (it’s movements and how it is etched) we are presented with are maybe represented from a pin-hole viewpoint.

What word do you feel should be brought back into popular usage?
‘Cloud-compeller’. According to Morris Marples, author of University Slang (1950) it was used to describe a smoker, but it would be equally good to describe that feeling before a particularly tricky day or a story that you know is going to raise that cloud of wonder that you’ll carry with you for the rest of the day.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
That our worlds are full of possible, if we can only imagine it.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
I tend not to start with a fully fledged idea of what something will look or sounds like. Instead, I have a sense of something I want to convey, and what sources I might use, what characters I might create. I frequently use surrealist methods - literally drawing down the first few (out of copyright) images I find and combining them with other materials to see how they’ll work. Leveraging the power of chance! I’ll probably take a very short time to make an initial draft picture, then about two weeks, sometimes more, to turn it into an image I’m happy with.

Do you have a creative routine - a ritual that helps get you in the creative zone?
Yes. I write/make, with friends, a visual poem a day between the 7-14th of each month (most months). This gives me a lot of rough drafts to work with, and if they have any legs I spend the rest of the month editing them.

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down?
Edward Hirsch, The Essential Poet’s Glossary. It’s a book I dip in and out of for inspiration and for prompts when I get stuck on how to present something, or want to learn something new.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
Oh, there are so many. Perhaps Gwerful Mechain (est.1462-1500), a Welsh Bardic poet who wrote freely of women’s sexuality, as well as being wholly lyrically powerful with language.

What surprising reactions have you gotten to your work?
Sometimes the fact that I use words and text, can provoke odd reactions. I’ve had people say that my work disturbs their concentration. On the whole, though, I’ve had really positive reactions, and I love it when people contact me through my website and ask questions about how I work.

Name a favourite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
Anything that storytells through making older narratives more modern, or which draws on vintage/retro narratives but remakes them. All the way from Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge through to Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, with a great deal of Neil Gaiman in-between.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
Absolutely, my entire life has been a tradeoff. I've bartered away decades. I would rather write and explore/read/learn writing and find ways to get my writing into the world than do anything else, so it has been hard to exist, to have a family, to fragment my time... Our culture decided long ago that people born with female sex organs are supposed to do all sorts of physical and emotional labor that other people are exempt from, and that reality still looms large in my own life. I have to shift my mindset around fairness/justice to live without bitterness and be grateful for all the family support I get these days. Our culture only values what is bought/sold so the work of poetry or any art is often severely undervalued, especially by those who dare not let themselves see the violence of capitalism.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
Adrienne Rich and quickly thereafter Audre Lorde are my inspirations to this day. I found Dream of a Common Language and Diving into the Wreck and would go to bookstores to look for more (long before internet) and someone somewhere said, if you like that, you might want to try this. That was The Black Unicorn sometime in the 80s. Then bell hooks. But it was also very isolating to have all this knowledge and feeling and not know what to do with it or where to go. I wrote and wrote but without peers or the ability to make connections. I was (and still am) disabled by my autism. I didn't know I was autistic - I just couldn't communicate very well. And I was traumatized. I had to learn very slowly. I had a hard time regulating my system (finding calm). I had to find work-arounds. But I didn't have any mentors or even know that I needed a mentor. But these women writers were reassuring. I was no longer completely alone.

Who do you think is the most misunderstood historical figure?
Females and gender non conforming people, especially BIPOC, especially queer, and especially disabled. While I am not BIPOC, I'm certainly an ally, and I live an intersectional feminism that insists that misunderstood and missing voices of history are vital and urgent for this moment and beyond if we want to be able to shift the culture forward toward healing, climate action, peace and hope. Of course there is confusion on a mass scale because Western culture has privileged cis hetero white male voices to the exclusion and the erasure of all else for so long. I come out of theatre where cis white men are the dominant voices on our stages. This is unconscionable in this day and age when we desperately need to hear from everyone else. At least in the publishing of poetry, cnf and fiction, the gatekeepers are more open to diversity. How can we be understood if we can't even be heard?

What do you want people to take away from your work?
I want my work to inspire and offer a feeling of hope. I want people to be uplifted by my work, to feel less alone. Most of my work is dark and visceral. I've spent a lot of time writing trauma and recovery. It was only once I was healed enough from my traumatic experiences that I could tell there was something else going on, and that has only recently been identified as autism. But I was misdiagnosed and mis-medicated. I was gaslit and told my experiences were "all in my head." The feeling of existing outside what's considered human, I don't want other people to suffer feeling alien the way I have. So I see my work as a way to reach out and create community. I believe in catharsis and the power of words to inspire healing and create a sense of agency. As I got clearer on these ideas, I had to make an actual community for female-identified and enbee people called www.BraveSpace.online where people from across the globe come together to write and share work. I started it in 2019 so that people don't have to write alone especially the dark writing of trauma because I lived through that alone, and I know what that's like.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
I don't know if I ever close the gap. I abandon the work. I come back to it years later sometimes. I spend way too long on everything. Most pieces, a year or so. And that's too long! I'd like to get it down to about a month for a poem. Plays take at least 3 years to develop, so I'm used to long timelines. But seriously, I have a lot of work I just never sent out because I never had enough sense to send it. Of course when I first started sending out work, no one took anything. Even people I was sleeping with wouldn't publish my work. I've only just started sending work out again. It took me a long time to feel as if I could stand to be rejected.

Do you have a creative routine - a ritual that helps get you in the creative zone?
I set a timer. That's my routine for creativity. If I know I only have 5 or 15 minutes, how hard can it be? So I set a timer. Then I work til it goes off. It helps me feel safe. I don't worry that I'll get stuck in a difficult place. Everything I used to write was trauma-based. So going into that mess was hard. I set a timer or I worked in public, like on the subway, or in the park, where I knew I couldn't lose myself. That felt safe to me. But I also have www.BraveSpace.online, so I know I am working with friends. I'm not alone there. And it also gets easier over time. These days I'm very good at slipping into whatever I'm working on, so if I don't have a timer, I might never surface, but more and more that's because I'm enjoying myself inside the work!

What surprising reactions have you gotten to your work?
Before I had any trauma memories, and I was writing dark, traumatic stories, people would assume I was conscious of my traumas, and they would come up to me and say things like, "thank you so much for writing about your own abuse. It gives me hope." I would nod and be like, thank you for witnessing it. I would tell them they'll be all right. I had no clue, but people took solace from it. But writing comes from a place deeper than the conscious mind. So I have to trust myself to write, and I have to allow myself to go places I may not be familiar with in a conscious way, as if I am teaching myself, writing to myself. Of course once there's something on the page, it has to be considered and composed. But I'm curious even if it shocks me, so I surprise myself. Sometimes people will say, "this helps me own my own history." That's the best reaction ever.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
I love the work of visual artists. Louise Bourgeois is a favorite as is Louise Nevelson. I am drawn to textiles and assemblages. I like textures and building things with various materials. I like different materials to rub up against each other, to create a sense of joy in darkness. Bourgeois's cells fascinate me. I'm also a knitter so I'm really interested in patterns and breaking them open.

Who were the first authors or artists to broaden your worldview?
Maurice Sendak and Beatrix Potter. When I was a little girl, I read Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. The story fascinated me. I loved the monsters and wished I could meet them in person. Beatrix Potter’s tales also sparked my imagination. The animals’ lives were fascinating. Some survived harrowing experiences.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
I want to pull readers into the worlds that I create so they will engage with the characters and feel vested in their fates. People are complex creatures—no one is all good or all bad. I hope that my fiction and poetry inspires readers to think about human nature and how people interact with each other, with animals, and with the environment.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
The amount of time it takes to create finished work depends on the scope of the project, my mindset, and whether my focus is pulled by other obligations. Poems tend to take less time to write than short stories, but I’ve tinkered with some poems and stories for more than a year before I was satisfied that they were complete. Ideally, I like to set work aside before I submit it for publication so my thoughts can germinate. I reflect on how I’ve used language to convey imagery and stimulate the readers’ senses. I consider characters’ motivations and actions. I think about themes that the work addresses. I decide whether I need to add another layer of complexity such as a speculative element.

What’s the last book you didn’t finish and why?
An anthology of short stories. I put it down because there were too many typographical errors.

What surprising reactions have you gotten to your work?  
I love to receive feedback from readers. I’ve gotten the most feedback on fiction and poetry that incorporates visceral imagery. My story “My Heart Stopped Beating But I’m Jonesing For A Fix” won the Cemetery Gates Flash Fiction Contest. A reader from Africa recently tweeted about it, “I’ve never read something so intense, creepy and eerily good like this before. It gave me all the chills and made me want to gag. So vivid.”

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy. I love the shifting points of view and the gritty atmosphere. I’m a very visual person. When I write, I see the action as it unfolds on the page. Some of my stories utilize a nonlinear structure.

You’re sitting outside in a crowded place, peoplewatching. What’s going through your head?
The same thing going on in their head subconsciously—what, why, how. Questions unanswerable. Wonder. Wow look at this fellow, he's singing along to a reggae song. See a preacher preaching in the market square, see a Muslim hurrying off to the mosque. This political party want equality. This political party wants to improve the living standard. In this crowded street, there must be someone very rich, another very poor, another an immigrant starting a new life away from death or famine. Everyone is walking at a different pace. Where are they headed to? They must be hurting somehow, somewhere deep inside, somewhere untouchable. Even as black, we don't feel the same, as if color isn't enough to make us one. When I say color I mean uniformity. So when I see a crowded place I think of diversity, I think of a hundred or a thousand opinions or ways other than my way.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
That would be Leonard Cohen for sure. He might not be everyone's favourite but he's mine. His collections: "Book of longing, The flame, Let us compare mythology, Flowers for Hitler" etc. are a masterpiece. I listen to his songs (Hallelujah is my favorite) more than I listen to any other song. Maybe it's the poetry or the solemn melody. As a Nigerian teenager some years back I didn't understand my environment, or planet, for a long time I felt like an alien hidden inside a human body. I felt weird and disconnected from people. Leonard Cohen songs drew me closer to humanity, to God, to myself. Everyday I am grateful Leonard Cohen existed.

Who do you think is the most misunderstood historical figure?
Columbus! He discovered America, yes! He massacred the natives/aboriginals, yes! I don't know which one is more significant to remember. The discovery or the unfair deaths and enslavement that followed the discovery.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
Let them see God. And God is a metaphor for infinity. And infinity is us. We're endless. I am you, you are me. I want them to raise their heads after reading my work and find a reason to plant a tree, feed the hungry, and treat everyone and everything around them with respect—even their non-human neighbors.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
Sometimes I never get there. I only get close enough. Imagination is boundless but the data at our disposal as writers are limited. Sometimes there is no word or colour perfect enough to describe or paint perfection. I can only have a finished work that is close, so close to what I had imagined at any given time. So how long? That depends on what. The time ranges from 1 to infinity or never.

What does your perfect day look like?
I read the bible. I read books. I learn new things. I work. Everyone around me is happy etc. If at the end I find peace, then it a perfect day for me.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
I have many but to mention a few. I wish Leonard Cohen had won the Nobel prize for literature. Tony Hoagland too.

Environmental justice collections by Reckoning Press: if we're serious about saving this planet from imploding; then we should probably take Reckoning publications seriously.

Oyindamola Shoola is a Nigerian writers based in US. She co-founded SprinNG, a literary review dedicated to helping Nigerian and African writers.

Johnny Drill is a Nigerian singer, his songs are poetically articulated, he would archive more with international support.

What surprising reactions have you gotten to your work?
Sometimes people that I don't know DM me or email me telling me about my work they enjoyed. Sometimes someone want permission to perform my piece at a gathering or carnival. And who are mine to say no, it a beautiful thing to know your work is appreciated.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
Pirates of the Caribbean. The movie is epic. The storyline and casts are believe-able. The unpredictability in the movie is what I love and try to use sometimes. I don't want you to know where I am going to until I reach there.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
Jack Kerouac

Describe your perfect sandwich.
A Jersey Mike’s veggie sub.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
A little piece of me.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
I haven’t found out yet, I think I could spend decades trying to get it right. For practical reasons I give myself +/- five rounds of revisions.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions by John Fire Lame Deer and Richard Erdoes.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
David Lynch’s Blue Velvet.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
My mother, Rodema. She was an artist, art teacher, avid reader, and great story teller (when asked by me, which I often did.) My mother taught me to draw and paint. I remember her teaching me about the horizon line and how to bring the sky down to the ground. I was so proud of understanding that. She had a small print of a portrait of the artist and her daughter by Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun. I loved that picture. She had written a paper about the Pre-Raphelites in college, and she told me about them. She had art books, paints, and brushes, and she opened that world for me. She also told me stories of her childhood. She grew up on a farm. My grandparents made sure my mother and her sisters could go to college and have art and music lessons. My grandmother wrote stories and loved to read. In many ways, these mill working and farmer grandparents were radical feminists. The legacy of valuing the arts was gifted to me.

What word do you feel should be brought back into popular usage?
Respair. It means a return to hope (or to return to hope). It’s the counterpoint to despair. It’s telling that despair has stayed with us, but respair has been lost.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
What they need, a sense of not being alone, and the feeling that I did my best to serve the work. Madeleine L’Engle writes about the idea of creators doing our best to “serve the work.” The work comes to us, and we do our best to birth it and give it life.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
George MacDonald. He is an author who inspired C. S. Lewis, Madeleine L’Engle, and many others, especially through his fantasy works. Phantastes is one of my favorite novels. I read it at last once a year. Each time I read it, I gain something new. The story may be the same, but I am different—and the story responds to that. Ruth Sawyer is another. She is probably most famous for Roller Skates, but she has many other great works. Maggie Rose is one of my favorite childhood books. It’s sweet and enchanting, but also real and timeless. She also wrote a book about story telling, and she collected stories from various cultures and languages. There’s a deep understanding of, and an appreciation for, people in her works.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
The art of Eva Hesse, and learning about her from a PBS documentary, helped me to better appreciate modern art. Hesse said, “The art is the artifact of the process.” That concept is something I have reflected on with my writing. The act of creating is something in itself. It can be as significant as the work created—or even more so. The story I am left with is the artifact of the time I spent with those characters. The poem I am left with is the artifact of the time I spent with those words, images, and feelings. That time was important. Spending that time was important.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
Cut sleep, get more done. It's been hard, but I'm trying to find the time.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
Hard to think of a single answer. I do believe that Borges and his ability to give a germ of a tale as well as its antithesis in a single short story opened up my way of thinking about short stories. So did Angela Carter's retelling of fairy tales.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
I do hope it helps them think and see the world in new ways. Not sure I can come up with something specific.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
Is there ever a finished piece? I get close. But sometimes there's a moment where you have to let go of something and watch it do as well as it can in the world. It's always hard. So too that it never quite approaches the perfect one you have in your mind.

Do you have a creative routine - a ritual that helps get you in the creative zone?
Shutting out all distractions is the biggest one, I think. So too is the ability to set a certain amount of time and saying I will do something even if it ends up in the trash heap. YMMV.

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down?
Gulag Archipelago. But not for any reason, such as its own deficiencies, but lately my relationship with books has been superficial. I'm not sure why. It started in this late pandemic era (the early era was great) and now seems to have lingered longer than I would have liked. Like my mind is looking for answers, or is unsatisfied with so much out there that it shorts my concentration. Any help would be great in this regard.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
Abyssinian Chronicles. Read this a while back. Actually, after I had read a page, loved it, then put it down for five years (so maybe this is some cyclical personal defect of mine). A Ugandan epic that I think everyone should read. I got to the Idi Amin part right when Trump was elected. That was something else.

What surprising reactions have you gotten to your work?
I've learned that both my writing and art, once it's out there, will be taken in ways I never even imagined, and can't imagine even today. The Struggle was seen by many as realistic and gritty and real. Seen by some as anti-American. Others as a handbook for occupation. Yet others as proof of Shia treason. I have no clue how to take that, as it was never my intention and almost made me want to delete it. But the text is the text and not the author, whatever people say. And people really will bring a million other experiences to that text. The same goes for visuals, though I think the abstract nature of much of my work leaves more open to interpretation and words unsaid.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
When I first saw Mark Bradford's art, it was like the answer to questions I didn't know I had. Not sure if that makes sense. Maybe it shouldn't. But the immensity of what a single painting of his can contain will always amaze me.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
I started doing art when I was a teenager. After graduating from university, I immediately started working as a physiotherapist and at the same time, I had my own family. Everyday life did not allow me to have time for what I loved. After two and a half decades I gave up Physiotherapy to pursue Photography. So, the answer is no, I did not have to compromise. Now I can adjust my daily routine so that I can devote a large part of my time to my art.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
The first writer who opened a window to the world for me was Giannis Ritsos. He was a Greek poet, who wrote about human rights, the oppressed people around the world and equality between humans. I believe that Art cannot stand apart from human pain and I try to keep my eye on humanity, having an anthropocentric view.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
Every day millions of photographs are created around the world. Our eyes see them passing by far too quickly. What I would like, first and foremost, is for viewers to stand for a few seconds at my work. If even my photograph creates an emotion in just one viewer, it's a great satisfaction for me.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
When I find my subject, I take many shots from different angles. By looking at them on the computer I figure out what the final images I will work on will be. The editing doesn't take long, as I believe that the work should be done through the camera, not through the computer. The most time-consuming part of my work is selecting the images until I reach the final piece, which I submit for publication.

Do you have a creative routine - a ritual that helps get you in the creative zone?
I get up very early in the morning when everything around is quiet. I have a schedule that I follow strictly. I work early in the morning and late in the afternoon. I believe that an artist has to work every single day to maintain their inspiration. Deep down I feel that a day without creativity is a day wasted.

What surprising reactions have you gotten to your work?
The most emotional moment I can remember was a few years ago. A project about an orphanage, that was run for children who had lost their parents in World War II, was published. An alumnus of the orphanage saw the project, got in touch with me, and organized a reunion, almost eighty years later. It was a very special moment. What always surprises me in my viewers is their reaction to images of their town or village. "But where is that? I have never seen it before!" they say. I try to discover the hidden beauty in unlikely places. My goal is to make people see through my eyes something beyond the obvious.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
The Polish film Ida has had a great influence on my work. Shot entirely in black and white, it is characterized by minimalism in the image, the expressive means and sound. I always try to remove anything superfluous, and my images tell stories without words being necessary. I think black and white stories emphasize emotion.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
Sleep, mainly—though I've always been an insomniac, so that isn't a huge sacrifice. Housework, however, often falls by the wayside. Lots of spots need patching and painting that will just have to wait.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
Shakespeare. My parents liked to quote soliloquies so "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" is as much a part of my childhood as "Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star." It gave me a fascination with the power of poetic language at a very early age.

Who do you think is the most misunderstood historical figure?
I don't know if he's the most misunderstood, but there seems to be vast popular romanticizing of van Gogh's mental illness as the source of his genius. The man suffered crippling episodes of psychosis, and was at his most prolific during periods of lucidity. Artists are no more aided by "madness" than athletes are by injury—except, perhaps, when the labor of recovery drives them to make the most of their gifts.

What word do you feel should be brought back into popular usage?
"Often" pronounced with the silent "T." I don't know when it started, but I hear "off-ten" everywhere now. It's like nails on a blackboard.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
It's not a lecture. It's a conversation. I said my piece. What do you think?

What surprising reactions have you gotten to your work?
Many years ago, I got a letter from someone about a story of mine. He read it, thought about it, expressed appreciation for the style, and absolutely hated it. Told me so, citing chapter and verse. I wish more people read my stuff with that degree of attention.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
I definitely prefer shift work to 9-5 in this respect because I like a bit of separation between work space and writing space. My trade off is living alone so no-one can interfere with my writing!

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
My grandfather R.N. Currey was a poet himself and I inherited the mindset from him - he taught me to write. He was a schoolmaster and our walks around Colchester when he used to tell me about the Roman city under the modern street opened my mind to the past and gave me an interest in history which has never left me. I'm a European historian by training so living abroad and researching in French archives showed me a different dimension to the world. Pieter Brueghel is one of my favourite painters - he shows life in the raw with huge symbolic depth.

Who do you think is the most misunderstood historical figure?
That's a tough question. I'd say Joan of Arc. Her life was epic and I don't think we can quite perceive that even now. Since I have worked with forensic patients I wonder if she had schizophrenia. Also, I'm curious as to whether, had she been male, what she would have represented? To her time she was transgressive by virtue of her gender, her mission and her courage to challenge patriarchal kingship. But her troops respected her as one of them. I'd love to know what they talked about day to day.

What word do you feel should be brought back into popular usage?
'Dimpsey' was taught me by a patient to describe the time before dusk. It's West Country dialect and I'd never heard it used in conversation so I wrote a poem about it.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
What my Dad taught me - that the writing is clear and sharp and conveys my exact meaning.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
That varies enormously. There are days when I want to write and climb the walls because I am tired or my brain won't go there. Some pieces come fast and other are rattling about for months and I write bits when I can. Days, weeks or months. It depends. It's always in my mind somewhere. I like car journeys. My head can go wherever it wants, then.

Do you have a creative routine - a ritual that helps get you in the creative zone?
Yes. It's ADHD meds, coffee and nicotine I'm afraid, not too much else going on. I write on my phone on my living room sofa. Usually mornings are better

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down?
In my case it's more like don't even start. I have an aversion to literary fiction that intensifies with age. I mostly read non-fiction. I lasted one page of Wolf Hall.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love for the human truths that lie behind the facade of romantic love. It takes courage to laugh at yourself and she can, even though it hurt.

What surprising reactions have you gotten to your work?
Getting published! I said I would only write with that intention. My favourite editorial comment was that my poem made the editor 'feel deranged, but in a good way'. Getting shortlisted for the Rhysling awards was a surprise as well. My biggest surprise has been the support of my mother and uncle who print my work off and save it. And my mother’s unflinching ability to be detached and maintain critical poise, no matter what I’ve written about

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
That will relate to the kinds of films I like. I love Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino - I often go to those dark places and mean streets because I love them. I also love the way Ridley Scott creates a whole vision in Blade Runner and gets inside the minds of replicants who believe they’re human. That’s such a poetic film to me. I like slipstream because you can reinvent any story you like and compare it to something else. I say things in poems I struggle to admit in real life.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
I don’t watch many movies or TV shows, so often I have no clue what people are talking about when it comes to different series. On the up side, I don’t care about spoilers. My partner is also a writer, so we understand the demands on/for writing time. It’s helpful to live with someone who wants to bounce around plot ideas over dinner, and who knows that the creative practice is fun but also work.

It's a blessing and a curse to have the constant compulsion to write things down since I never know when some scrap of an observation will come in handy. At least when I’m having a bad day I can soothe myself with the thought that it could be future material.

Who do you think is the most misunderstood historical figure?
Helen Keller. Many facets of her work as an author, world traveler, and peace advocate are not well-known or appreciated. People tend to think of her as the little girl who was helped by Anne Sullivan, but not as the activist who traveled to Hiroshima after the detonation of the atomic bomb and wrote poignantly about the sensory experience of being in the middle of that devastation.

What word do you feel should be brought back into popular usage?
Milquetoast. It’s an interesting way to describe a bland person.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
That depends on the story. With many pieces I’d like people to find laughter. I also write about characters with disabilities, so I hope the reader has a new way of conceptualizing of bodies and ways of moving through the world. Disability doesn’t have to be a plot point or problem that needs to be solved, it can simply be another aspect of character.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
Sometimes the most interesting stories are born when the gap widens, when what I thought the piece would be is not what it is in the end. That aspect of plot is something I can only realize once I let the characters drive and I sit back and observe what they do.

Do you have a creative routine - a ritual that helps get you in the creative zone?
If I need to brainstorm ideas, I handwrite drafts on the back of scrap paper. When I get a divot in the side of my finger from the pen, it’s time to start typing my notes.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
I feel that my life is a constantly shifting set of needs and priorities. As a teacher, I work on a lot of student writing, and that can be draining, making my own creative writing suffer. Of course, sometimes I write as a procrastination method, so that can work. Inspiration as an avoidance technique serves me well. I also often have to carve out time to write. I have a long commute and that is where stories often surface - and then disappear. I try to catch them, but coming home to the evening routine often allows them to slip away. However, I have found that creativity and writing are not options; they are not luxuries. I suppose if my mind were Jurassic Park, containing my carefully engineered ideas and responsibilities, those would switch allegiances, escape, and take over. Stories will find a way.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
There are so many! My mother read to us, and I once conflated Martin Luther with Mark Twain and thought the nailing of the 95 Theses on the church door was the next chapter of Treasure Island. It made sense to my five-year-old self. C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were and are critical to me. I read a lot of Alcott and girl’s books from the early part of the 20th Century inherited from my mother and grandmother. I had an amazing four volume collection of Golden Books and I loved the combination of art and storytelling. I spent hours reading my favorites over and over. I once led my first grade classroom across the playground at recess to show them where Thumbelina lived. I learned a lot from the stories that I inhabited and which inhabited me, and it made me prone to exploration of worlds and ideas.

What word do you feel should be brought back into popular usage?
Discombobulate is such a fun word - it is so perfectly applied to so many situations. I am often discombobulated myself, and the word encapsules that messiness and disconnect that happens throughout the day.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
I want people to experience the story on some level, though with some of my horror writing, that experience should be buffered a bit. Being pulled into the story, by the prose and the images as well as by the characters and plot, is something that happens to me at the best of times, and I hope it happens to my readers. I also hope that many of my pieces leave people thinking about the underlying realities of the story. Ultimately, I want the story to dwell with the reader during the time they are together and for a bit after they part ways.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
The work is never as I imagined it. It morphs and changes, and I never quite catch the full inspiration. I can, however, write something and finish it in one sitting. Other times, it takes multiple tries to finish the writing. Then I need to let it sit at least a day, (and with my schedule it is often more than a day) for the revision process. Mistakes are caught when there is distance. I often get friends to be beta readers, and I will go over it a few times. The final part of the process is when it is done and possibly published, when I read it and realize that it has become its own entity. It is complete and so no longer wholly mine.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
Beth Hilgartner's A Necklace of Fallen Stars is a beautiful little book. It is out of print, and I hunt down copies when I can, because I often give them away. I think it is available now on Kindle. It is a book about a storytelling princess and there are stories embedded within the main story, and I love them. There is a story of a boy who is a palindrome and the story "The Colors of the Wind" speaks to the artist's dilemma of never quite capturing one's vision in a beautiful way that also speaks to the way we treat those in our communities who are unusual. It's a small novel to contain so much, but that is what poems and stories do; they contain worlds and allow the reader entrance to those worlds.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
I used to spend a lot of time on buses and trains, commuting to work and traveling between offices on opposite sides of the country (England, not America, so we’re talking hours rather than days). It allowed me plenty of time for reading and writing poetry. Since I have been working from home it has become harder to find time, and I often stay up later than intended, after the children have gone to bed, in order to write. So yes, I suppose I am trading sleep for creativity, but the latter is arguably more important.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
Perhaps not the first, but in terms of art I fondly remember standing by Chen Zhen’s Crystal Landscape of Inner Body, and being strongly moved by it. The piece consists of a collection of blown glass organs arranged on a glass table, which in themselves are beautiful, but are made more so by the way in which the light casts shadows of the glass components onto the floor beneath them, which move throughout the day with the sun. It showed me that even static art does not need to be truly static, and that the beautiful and the visceral are not mutually exclusive.

At school I studied the war poets, along with Plath, Hughes, Thomas, and many other names you would expect, all of which I enjoyed, all of which I have come to appreciate considerably more as an adult. In more recent years it was probably Yusef Komunyakaa’s poem “Camouflaging the Chimera” that really illuminated the potential of poetry to me. There is something about the way his poem (set during the Vietnam War), though stunning in its portrayal of the natural surroundings, allows me to experience that surreal psychological tension of the moment, a feeling that would otherwise be very foreign to me.

What word do you feel should be brought back into popular usage?
One of the words that I love, as much for its sound as its meaning, is ‘kakistocracy’. I also think that, given the state of political leadership so far this century (on both sides of the North Atlantic), it is one that could quite easily be brought back into common parlance.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
I don’t believe that a poem can ever truly be completely finished. Da Vinci is quoted as saying ‘Art is never finished, only abandoned’, and he was far wiser than I am. As for arriving at the point of abandonment? I have poems that have been through various drafts over several years and remain in my desk drawer, others that have been published within days of being written. I think that when it comes to creative processes time is a fluid thing.

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down?
The last book I put down unfinished was Eugene Peterson’s Tell It Slant, which looks at the language used by Jesus through the parables. It is a fantastic and informative book, and I find that each section demands multiple reads. For a more relaxed option I’ve picked up Dave Grohl’s autobiography, The Storyteller, which, being a longstanding fan of Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age, and Them Crooked Vultures, I am finding hard to put down. Perhaps not particularly highbrow, but he is a skilled artist who I admire greatly. I will get back to Peterson soon.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
Although deservedly well recognised in his field I feel that the architecture of Tadao Ando deserves to be seen and understood by more people than it is ever likely to be. I completed two degrees at Manchester School of Architecture, and often sat in Piccadilly Gardens, designed by Ando. His style of architecture is, in many ways, contradictory. It is complex in design but stylistically simple, created with hard industrial materials and yet beautiful and light. It has been likened to the complexities of a well-written haiku.

I also have great respect for Ando as, similar to myself and poetry, he is self-taught and had no formal training before starting his own practice. If I ever have the opportunity I would be delighted to visit The Church of the Light in Osaka and The Church on the Water in Shimukappu. Although beautiful in photographs I think these buildings, due to the way they utilise the natural elements of light and water against the heavy concrete structural components, need to be visited to be fully appreciated.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
One of my favourite films, and one that I think everyone should watch at least once, is the 1920 silent movie The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The set is exemplary, using sharp angles, elongated curves, and light and dark surface finishes to bring the skill of theatre design into the early film industry. It creates a quirky and slightly eerie mise en scéne that transports the viewer into the centre of the dreamlike narrative. Although I can’t claim to have achieved anything close to this through my poetry I often try to create strong and sometimes conflicting imagery to develop a greater depth of interest and draw the reader further into the poem.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
I am one of those blessed writers who has a fulfilling “day job” that pays the bills and has great health insurance. I use my remaining time to write—evenings, weekends, holidays, and vacation days—and in the course of almost 25 years, I have written 10 books, edited two anthologies, written several plays, and participated in hundreds of literary events. As I said, I am blessed.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
The very first book I remember checking out of my Catholic grammar school library was in 1965 when I was in first grade. I chose Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans. I was enchanted by Bemelmans’ illustrations for his story about a courageous Catholic school girl in Paris. I loved the story as well as the smell of the book’s pages. I knew then I wanted to be a writer and tell stories about exciting places and interesting people.

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

What do you want people to take away from your work?
The people who populate my stories, poems and plays are not exotic.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
It totally depends on the particular piece. I’ve written flash fiction in one day that gets published by journals and appreciated by readers. I’ve also spent about three years on a long story that became the title piece for one of my collections.

Do you have a creative routine—a ritual that helps get you in the creative zone?
Because I have limited time to write due to my day job, I just jump in and write when time permits. I am not fussy—I can write anywhere as long as I can put my laptop on a hard surface. I do not light incense, I don’t pray to the gods. I just stick my ass into a chair and write.

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down?
No comment. I don’t want to send out bad vibes into the world. Every book I buy is written by someone who cared about creating, and sometimes I just don’t “get” what they’re trying to do. But that doesn’t mean their work isn’t important to them or to other readers.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
Last year, the University of Nevada Press published Maceo Montoya’s illustrated novel, Preparatory Notes for Future Masterpieces. As I observed for the Los Angeles Review of Books, “[i]t is a wonderfully strange, hilarious, and heartbreaking illustrated novel about a fictionalized Mexican American artist’s dream to become a great painter.” While this wonderful book garnered some nice coverage, it did not receive the attention it deserved. I think part of the problem is that independent and university presses simply do not have the resources to promote their books.

What surprising reactions have you gotten to your work?
Early in my writing career, a professor wrote to me to thank me for a short story that I had published in an online literary journal. The professor said that he read the story on the anniversary of his sobriety, and that the story helped him not take a drink that day. The story was a magical realist piece that included a calamitous act committed by a person who was inebriated, but my goal was simply to tell a compelling story, not help someone stay sober. This experienced confirmed in my mind the power of art.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
When my wife and I visited Mexico a few years back, we visited many museums. One of our favorites was El Museo de Arte Moderno where we saw the original Frida Kahlo masterpiece of self-awareness, “Las Dos Fridas.” I love that painting! I eventually wrote a rather dark little story titled “Las Dos Fridas” that was first published in the literary journal, Tertulia, in 2005, and then featured in my collection, Anywhere but L.A.: Stories (Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe, 2009). In my story, the main character is a man who doesn’t care for Kahlo’s painting because it reminds him of his estranged novelist wife who had put him into one of her novels, and he was not happy about what she wrote. So, he conflates all creative people who draw on their own lives and doesn’t have a very generous opinion of them. But he’s basically a jerk who doesn't appreciate being called out for his bad behavior which was depicted in his wife’s novel.

You’re sitting outside a crowded place, people watching. What’s going through your head?
So many things. I try to get their body language and what it could be to them seeing someone like me. I will be bold enough to approach one of the people watching and talk to them and know what it is that they are watching and to see if there is any way I can help out.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
The first author is Dan Brown. I started out reading his books with first, The Lost Symbol and the whole story was intriguing to me and I developed a love to read more of his publications like Inferno, Da Vinci Code because I have this kind of love for world-renowned secret sects and how they have survived till this day. So, Dan Brown opened my eyes and mind to read more.

Who do you think is the most misunderstood historical figure?
Fela Kuti. Yes, I know that he was a historical figure not understood not until later that we began to see things from his points of view.

Describe your perfect sandwich.
Well, I don’t eat it always but it is perfect when I can see all the vegetables contained within that sunflower flower.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
1441 and other poems that I have written, I tried as much as possible to master just a day to day languages and words that wouldn’t be too hard for everyone to understand, even though it is one who just started reading poetry newly.

My messages are simple, they are in most cases, the result of the ill-treatment to the continent of Africa by then known worlds of which still today the African continent has not been able to recover from such treatments.

My poetry brings to the heart our tears, who we are, what we believe, how we live, how we related with our conquerors before our freedoms.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
It takes days and we as I reflect on the title of the work, walking out of the house and imagining the people in the piece, the message I want to pass out, I would come back to consider if the work was okay enough to be sent out to publishers.

What does your perfect day look like?
Waking up by 5am in the morning, I wake my wife and we have our morning prayers and some discussion and reflection before our son wakes up too.

I quickly get set out for the day, make some calls to family and friends and colleagues and then leaves the house with a kiss on my wife's forehead and that of my son too.

Get to the bus station and board a taxi going to my school for lecture and afterwards would be with my course mates and we discuss and after the day’s lecture within two to three hours I would return home to meet my wife and son, they are already waiting at the gate and seeing them again, I know that I am home again.

What’s the last book you didn’t finish reading, and why did you put it down?
My Experiment With Truth by Mahatma Gandhi. This book was the second autobiography that I have been looking up at to read and know what these men of old were able to accomplish before this era but when I started with all my strength, at stage I became tired of the book because I felt Gandhi is a slow writer, comparing it to Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk To Freedom which I had read within a short period of time; so, I became so wary and dumps the book till date.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
Late Chinua Achebe and Things Fall Apart.

What surprising reactions have you gotten to your work?
What I am doing right here and now. I have been writing since late 2019 after the outbreak of Covid19. I have been writing and submitting to so many magazines and newspapers but when the works are accepted for publication, they are not asking for an interview with me and honestly, none of them ever offered me a token as you have offered me. All are free and they print some and sell within themselves.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
12 Years a Slave and many other inhuman treatments against a particular set of people either by their will or otherwise. I remember visiting The Slave Trade Museum in the town of Calabar and the ordeal of the African slave, these things are in pictures and they keep shaping my reasoning.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
George Orwell (The book: 1984).

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
No time frame, a single poem can take weeks, or hours after writing, before I submit it to publishers, then I keep editing whenever I found it in need of editing, until the day it is published. Like Paul Valery rightfully said “An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it.”

Do you have a creative routine - a ritual that helps get you in the creative zone?
No, actually coming from a third world country where we may sometimes need to wait, and pray daily for electricity, on which typing on laptop and other electronic depends. Its random. I do have a ritual that helps, by reading great works.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
Khalil Gibran, my favorite poet. Yes…

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
Lord of the Rings series and Pirates of the Caribbean series, I may not be able to choose between the two in a torture chamber. The Africanism philosophy has an impact on the way I shape my stories.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
I don’t consider my life and my creativity to be separate. If I’m alive, I’m trying to be creative. Of course, there are some circumstances that try to beat the creativity out of me but I face that obstacle directly. Any barrier between myself and creativity becomes an extreme focus of my writing. I forgot who said that you must write out the poison but that sentiment affected me. I have no shortage of poison to write out.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
My dad gifted me poetry on tape— recordings of 20th century poets. When I heard a peculiar voice repeating “would he like it if I told him if I told him would Picasso” I was immediately entranced. It wasn’t until college that I realized that had been the voice of Gertrude Stein. I spent my college years writing cryptic Steinian word puzzles. It wasn’t until after I graduated and started going to poetry slams that I realized there may be value in also telling a story or at least making sense.

Who do you think is the most misunderstood historical figure?
The most misunderstood historical figure is the common person— so many writers who never get book deals, so many parents whose children are the dreams they never could fulfill themselves, so many who cultivated nature and trails that are destroyed or abandoned.

What word do you feel should be brought back into popular usage?
My grandma used the word “seldom” which means rarely or not often. She said that she seldom ate salmon. She lost the farm in the Great Depression so she probably did seldom eat salmon. My other grandma would say “oofta” if she got exasperated, sort of like “oh my!” I think it would be cute if we all started saying oofta, but leave it to the Norwegians!

What do you want people to take away from your work?
I want to be the kind of writer who shows other writers that identifying as a writer is a real way to live. I want people to experience the whole forest that surrounds my work and be motivated to connect with other writers and artists.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
Some poems come out exactly as they will be, some poems are not able to be rehabilitated and some poems can offer a few scraps toward a Frankenstein of collaging many poems together.

Do you have a creative routine - a ritual that helps get you in the creative zone?
I tend to write after work or on my days off. I like to sit in a giant bean bag and stare at photos of my favorite writers and artists and pretend that I am talking with them. It feels like a crush, a heart throb backstreet boy moment. Then, linked with desire, I’m ready to write.

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down?
I didn’t finish Ulysses by James Joyce. I’m not the literary saint I hoped to be. It’s terribly long and confusing.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
Patricia Smith is a genius poet. Everyone go read Blood Dazzler if you haven’t already.

What surprising reactions have you gotten to your work?
Once an old man came up to me after a poetry reading and said, “I can’t believe such a young beautiful lady can write a poem about pubic hair.” I wanted to say “that’s Genderqueer Witch to you” but I didn’t. I just wanted to get out of there in one piece.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
The only real tradeoff is having a job that's somewhat complementary, leaving me time and headspace to write around it.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
Jamaica Kincaid.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
I'd like the main takeaways from my work to be: embrace messiness, find the beauty in the grotesque, and see hope in mundane things. I write towards many possibilities--not all of them good--but the core is a reflection of how the world appears on the surface, and what happens when we look a little closer.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
This depends a lot on the piece. For poems, the process is pretty fast. I usually begin with an opening line or image and follow it where it wants to take me. In poetry, rhythm is what drives me forward. When the music sounds just right, the poem is complete.

Do you have a creative routine - a ritual that helps get you in the creative zone?
I handwrite all my notes, and my first drafts of poems are almost always handwritten as well. I'm able to feel the momentum easier that way. When I go to type up the poem, it changes--becoming more polished as I glimpse its final form. I prefer writing outside or by a window, and having some background music (usually instrumental) can help me find the right beat.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
Anna Maria Hong is an incredible poet, but every time I bring her up to someone, they've never heard of her. If you love dark fables and fairy tale retellings in hybrid forms, look her up. H&G was particularly impactful for me.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
Creativity demands time, thought, inspiration and rest. To nurture my creativity, I had to dig for time in my schedule. My commute to work had to end. I switched my job just to save myself the stress of parking in Boston downtown. It was a very hard decision to quit a wonderful job but I had to do it for long term gains.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
Authors like Tayari Jones, Richard Powers, Kingsolver come to mind immediately for combining social responsibility with good story telling. They have an impact even as the reader is immersed in the plot and characters. I am a composite of so many influences. Today the words of the poet Suli Breaks resonates with the teacher in me. He hated school and loved education. Mary Lambert’s Shame is an ocean I swim captures me with its honesty. Fact is, I like influences – the soft touches, the thuds, the crater creators – I love them all.

Who do you think is the most misunderstood historical figure?
Van Gogh was grossly misunderstood during his time. Original artists have an uphill climb, always.

What word do you feel should be brought back into popular usage?
Addition of new words is inclusive of newer generations, new memes and diverse thoughts. I’m happy that these days I find Arabic / Bangladeshi words in use in English and that is Oxygen to my lungs. I’d like to see the word karma used more as deed and work – a combination of intrinsic inclination and expression.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
What would I like readers to take from my work? That’s a difficult question to answer. I hope they diversify their reading list – include Ukrainians, Iranians, Muslims. There is just no other way to connect with all the people without that.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
Editing is a major part of my creation process. It is a time-consuming for me because I distance myself from the work and go back to it after weeks. I throw away the pieces that frustrate my expression. Tinkering with words is a rewarding effort and I hope every aspiring writer accepts that rejections are sweet even though they appear harsh at the moment.

Do you have a creative routine - a ritual that helps get you in the creative zone?
Reading an array of books is my favorite routine. It stirs up the calm waters within me.

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down?
I seldom leave a book unfinished. My reading selections are based on reviews and discussion questions. Racy novels and too many characters are a put off. I love contemporary topics and so I thought I’d not finish Winter Soldier (which deals with World war one). I absolutely loved the novel and reread many parts.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
Anjali Duva (A Faint Promise of Rain) deserves more recognition.

What surprising reactions have you gotten to your work?
The most surprising and appealing words used about my work are: bold and gritty. I hate arguments. I do not like to ruffle feathers. So, I was thrilled to hear that my work is audacious. I also liked these words: you write about what really matters in this world.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
A recent Hindi movie called Thappad was thought provoking. I was outraged about marriage laws and conjugal rights presented in the film. Ever since I’ve been looking at laws that have not changed much with times. I look at the murky stream of topics like divorce settlements, custody battles and Roe Vs. Wade arguments going on for the last 40 years and believe that we need to change this scene for women – through more stories, poems and articles. That’s my goal for my writing.

You're sitting outside in a crowded place, peoplewatching. What's going through your head?
I’m wondering about what secrets they’re keeping. I want to know if that little old lady is a kleptomaniac or if that hipster dude has a pet hamster that he loves. People are so interesting but it’s never in the face they show to the world. The fascination is always lurking there beneath the surface. I think most people are like icebergs with just 10% showing and the rest hidden below. As a writer, that’s the part that interests me.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
As a preteen, I started reading Nathaniel Hawthorne in school and learned that symbolism was important. The fact that his stories were always about something more than just the plot really impressed me. It was like being privy to some secret code that I could decipher as I went along. Hawthorne is one of those authors that every school kid should read.

Who do you think is the most misunderstood historical figure?
Probably Malcolm X. Though accused of preaching violence and racism, he struggled to understand and articulate the very legitimate complaints of Black Americans. He said “You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.” I don’t find that divisive or inflammatory. After his break with the Nation of Islam, most of his teachings are uncomfortable truths but truths nonetheless. Read his speeches and see for yourself.

Describe your perfect sandwich.
You must start with a good bread. The bread has to be crusty and yeasty and wonderful. Then layer on a sharp cheese like aged cheddar or Asiago and pile on some roast beef or black forest ham. Add tomatoes, a leafy lettuce and a hint of tangy mustard. Salt and pepper. No mayonnaise. Are you hungry yet?

What do you want people to take away from your work?
I want people to look at the world in a slightly different way after they’ve read my work. I don’t have to convey a major theme in every piece but, hopefully, just a little sliver of a meaning or point of view that the reader hadn’t considered before. In Hanna’s Heart, the takeaway should be that it’s okay to want more out of life than the conventional goals, that it’s worthwhile to go down a few rabbit holes in one’s life.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
It depends. Sometimes a piece emerges fully formed. Other times, it’s a work-in-progress for months before I shape it into its finished condition. The former are usually the best pieces, not only the cleanest but the most gratifying ones to write. I try to do a lot of the writing in my head before I take pen to paper. That way, I have a chance to roll it around and choose the perfect word or image before I commit. I’m a very intuitive writer. Sometimes a meaning doesn’t become clear to me until after I get it down on paper. Then I reread and think, yes, that’s just what I was going for. Or, conversely, I decide it isn’t satisfactory at all and go back to the proverbial drawing board.

What does your perfect day look like?
I like a gray, rainy day. You have to work to find its beauty. Living in Portland, Oregon, I often get to wake up to these glorious, overcast days. They’re ideal for sitting inside and writing or reading a good book. There’s no need to make excuses for not venturing out.

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down?
It was King and Maxwell by David Baldacci. It was a perfectly good, even exciting story but it was all plot-driven, heavy on the action. I picked it up in a cruise ship library and tried to finish it for weeks afterward. The problem was, when I put it down, nothing remained for me to think about, it was all there on the page in its entirety. Definitely not my cup of tea.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
There’s a British-born Canadian crime writer named Peter Robinson that I think every writer should read. He weaves a series of simple mysteries set in Yorkshire and lets his character, Inspector Banks, solve them. What’s remarkable about Robinson’s work is the way he layers on the character development in little hints and embellishments until you know absolutely everything about the people who make up his stories. And he makes it look so easy.

What surprising reactions have you gotten to your work?
I’ve had people say that my writing can be mean-spirited but they couldn’t be further from the truth. I just enjoy a character who has flaws. In general, people are more interesting if they’re not perfect. They’re far more relatable. Of course you have to be careful not to go too far or your character becomes unlikeable. Most of my characters’ flaws are little ones, but the more peculiar the better as far as I’m concerned.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
All of the early films of David Cronenberg. Again, like with Hawthorne, Cronenberg was heavy-handed on the symbolism. Most of his films were creepy and lurid and I love that. His point-of-view on human nature was so delightfully skewed. In The Brood, for example, a woman produces children that are an actual physical manifestation of her rage. Too cool. I’ve always been a fan of horror movies in general but Cronenberg did it like no one else. I don’t even write horror but I like to try to convey a sense of surprise or even outrage at some small elements in my stories.

You're sitting outside in a crowded place, peoplewatching. What's going through your head?
"How would I describe that person's appearance, as a character in my novel?"

"That guy's outfit is #TransitionGoals."

"So that's how men sit on the subway." (adjusts legs)

"Now that I pass for male, I can't tell women that I love their shoes anymore, because I don't want to be creepy. This is so sad."

"That person is beautiful and I hope they appreciate themself and make good relationship choices."

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
When I was in first grade, the cartoon version of C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe aired on TV. With no religious upbringing or ability to recognize Christian allusions, I nonetheless felt awe in the presence of something sacred, and made up a sort of spiritual practice of my own around the characters.

Who do you think is the most misunderstood historical figure?
As a middle schooler with a special interest in old English history, I read mystery novelist Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time and became so convinced that Richard III didn't kill the Princes in the Tower, I wore a pin with his face on it, at a time when my classmates were more likely to wear "no nukes" buttons!

Nowadays, I am constantly discovering how much of our "history" is built on white colonialist myth-making. James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me will shake up your perceptions of Helen Keller, Christopher Columbus, Woodrow Wilson, and many others.

Describe your perfect sandwich.
Tuna melt (not too much mayo) with Swiss cheese on rye bread, onion rings on the side.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
I would like them to feel sensual pleasure, see the truth of their lives clearly, and cut ties with abusive people and social systems.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
For a poem, a few days, or never. For a novel, eight years.

What does your perfect day look like?
Good night's sleep with no nightmares. Play with my son and walk him to school. Body-scan and chakra balance meditation for my Temple of Witchcraft correspondence course. Write two hours. Eat onion rings. Watch "The Sopranos" on the treadmill. Spend time with a cat. Talk to a friend. Romantic evening with my husband. Asleep by 10 (we're middle-aged introverts, okay?).

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down?
I tried twice and failed to get into Gabriel Tallent's My Absolute Darling, a novel about a girl being abused and isolated by her survivalist father. Something about the flat, bleak narration style of the third-person close POV kept me at a distance from her personality and interiority.

Some Goodreads reviews took issue with the fact that the author was a cisgender man, not publicly self-identified as a survivor, writing about an incested girl. This kind of gatekeeping offends me enough that I nearly kept reading the book out of spite! No one should be pressured to disclose personal information in order to prove their pedigree to write fiction. But in the end, I didn't want to return to this book's headspace.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
Ariana Reines' The Cow from Fence Books is a brilliant, grotesque, heart-filled poetry collection about embodiment and mother-daughter trauma. It was a friend to me in a time of crisis. Reines recently won the Kingsley Tufts Award for A Sand Book, so she's doing well in the recognition department, but mostly among other poets—she deserves to be a household name.

What surprising reactions have you gotten to your work?
Friends who know what a quiet, domestic life I lead are sometimes surprised by how raunchy and masculine my fiction is. And readers who first meet me through my fiction are surprised that it isn't autobiographical! I have never attended the White Party in Miami, been in a fistfight, or taken 'shrooms at a Christian men's conference, but my imaginary friends tell me all about it. (Buy Two Natures from Saddle Road Press, and they will talk to you too!)

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
I'm more of a TV series buff than a film buff. My long fiction is very episodic and even my shorter pieces have a lot of jump cuts and non sequiturs, similar to the juxtaposition of unusual ideas in poetry (the genre I started out in). The era of bingeing streaming TV shows is a real boon to writers because we can study the long-term arc of a character in a compressed time period. Or so I tell myself to justify watching two "Sopranos" episodes a day.

The protagonist of my current novel-in-progress writes gay superhero comics. Drafting the scripts for his comic book, which are excerpted throughout his narrative, I conceived the ambition to write a real graphic novel. One has to be extremely economical with language in these scripts, which will be a new challenge and skill for me to learn.

I read lots of graphic novels for pleasure, but now I'll be studying my favorites again for technique: Will Eisner, Alison Bechdel, Molly Knox Ostertag, Maia Kobabe, Jen Wang, Jarrett Krosoczka. My son and I read many Dav Pilkey books together (the Dog Man and Captain Underpants series) and I am impressed by how Pilkey's cartoons can be simple and childlike yet perfectly composed and expressive. It ain't as easy as it looks.

You’re sitting outside in a crowded place, people watching. What’s going through your head?
When I’m quietly watching folks as they move into and out of the airport waiting area, I like to observe their body language. I make up stories about them.

Here are a few examples of what goes on inside my head:

Where is that middle-aged woman in the black velvet bedazzled sweat suit going? She keeps adjusting and readjusting her collar. Maybe there’s a long lost friend at the end of her journey she thinks this outfit will impress. The friend was always so condescending when they were growing up! And why is that business traveler in the three-piece suit constantly tapping his very expensive leather briefcase with the tips of two fingers? No doubt he has a secret life as a jazz musician. His bosses would be so surprised to know this about him. Is that why he’s smiling ever so slightly? There is an older couple sitting opposite to me who have not said a word to each other in the last hour. But she leans against him comfortably. He strokes her arm. They have their own unspoken language. My guess is they are going to visit their daughter who they haven’t seen in more than a year. There was a falling-out over who was or was not invited to the daughter’s wedding but it’s all been forgotten now that the daughter is pregnant with their first grandchild. Pacing the floor near the concession stand is a young man gripping a bouquet. Why is he taking fresh flowers on a plane? He’s not sure if meeting someone online and talking for weeks on end over the internet was the best idea he ever had but he was just so lonely. He doesn’t want to mess up this first face-to-face meeting. But he’s been told roses are the perfect romantic gesture.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
My older brother, Nick Faraone, who is neither an author nor an artist, broadened my worldview. He was the first in our family to finish high school and then college. Later, he taught history to high school students for more than 33 years. But, as a young, first-year college student he would sit me down at our kitchen table and teach philosophy, poetry, politics to me—a 12-year-old girl. Nick is as gifted with languages as he is with teaching. Often he would read the poetry of the French Symbolists to me—in French! Then he would translate the poems for me, asking if I could hear how the sky “cries” in French but not in English. After explaining to me some portion of the Socratic dialogues, he would ask me how I would define the nature of good and evil. So often I would reply that I was, after all, only 12, and just didn’t know how to answer. He would snap at me, saying, “You’re not thinking. You’re smart. Now what is the nature of ‘good’?” In college, Nick was a history major with a minor in philosophy and a concentration in Black History. I would stand over his shoulder as he wrote his term papers and we would discuss the subjects at hand. I read many of Nick’s college texts along with him. A few books such as The Fire Next Time; The Souls of Black Folk; Soul on Ice (a book I still own); Les Jeux Fait (in English, of course); Summerhill School; and The Poems of Wordsworth are just a few titles of books that come readily to my mind.

When accepting the U.S. Professor of the Year Award from the Carnegie Foundation and CASE in 2012, I said this about my brother:

“What [Nick] taught me is this: nothing worth having is easy, that the riches of an intellectual life are mine for the taking and that, with patience and fortitude, nothing is beyond my capacity to learn.”

Describe your perfect sandwich.
Just about any sandwich that my husband is about to take a bite out of is what I consider to be the perfect sandwich. Somehow his sandwiches always look better than mine and I’m convinced they always taste better. I must say he is gracious about letting me eat his food. And, yes, after I do take the smallest, daintiest, civilized bite of his sandwich, I know I am right about how delicious it is.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
My great hope is that, after engaging with my work, readers will feel a sense of comfort and astonishment.

The poet and critic Lewis Turco, writing a review of my books in the Hollins Critic, said of my work:

“She is able to pull a reader into her world by the nape of the neck and make him live there until she’s done. Then, when you’re through reading, you want to thank her for the abduction.”

As Turco so succinctly points out, I wish my readers to come with me on journeys which explore liminal space. Through my poems, I’d like my readers to stand on “the line in between.” I want my poems to amplify the astonishment of one who stands on the boundary or threshold drawn between “before” and “after,” “now” and “then,” “yes” and “no.” This is the essence of becoming.

My poetry explores the nature of change and roots itself in concepts of marginality. The poems are imbued with a sense of movement toward—or away from—various psychological, political, physical or spiritual centers. Sometimes the poems rise. At other times they push against the forces which act upon them. Still other poems shift back and forth like a metronome which, simply and almost sadly, gives the illusion of movement but, in reality, goes nowhere.

However, the intention for all the poems is to create an experience of multi-layered states of consciousness, perception and empathy. The works offer a way to explore the trajectory of change. For example, what happens when “the invisible”—however that gets defined—materializes in our world? How do we survive our own lives?

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
I am an excruciatingly slow writer.

As I often tell my students, it has been my observation that writers go through the world with imaginations that are something like a magnet held over metal filings. Often sights, sounds, memories, pieces of dialogue, observations, the “whatnots” of everyday living as well as the musings of the future stick to our imaginations in indiscriminate and overwhelming ways. I tell them it is not that we have nothing to say, it is that we have too much to say.

This has been true for me. I am quite frequently overwhelmed. That is the good news. I feel very alive by own reactions to the world.

And like Robert Frost, who said he wrote “as a momentary stay against confusion,” I too write as a way of sorting out the abundance of my imaginings.

This, however, takes time.

Regularly I find that a poem I will be in midst of writing is answering a question I didn’t know I had asked. And so I have to stop and try to discover the question being offered to me. So I will write a line. Look at it. Ask myself if this line will lead me in the direction of a question I have only just sensed but not fully understood.

Usually, it does not. So I write another line to see if this is the one which will open the door to understanding.

And so it goes. I write and I rewrite. It is a process of layering. For each line or image leads me in various directions until finally a series of lines seem to emerge as a kind of map. Then all I have to do is follow it home.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
When I first saw Johannes Vermeer’s 1658 masterpiece, The Milkmaid, the painting took my breath away. In this deceptively simple scene, a young girl is pouring milk from a jug into a bowl. There is bread on a blue clothed table. Morning light illuminates the back white wall. There is a straw basket on the wall behind the girl and one on the floor near her feet. The girl pours milk into an earthenware bowl on the table. As I learned when reading the text near the painting in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, nothing in this scene moves except the stream of milk. The painting distills a moment in time. Yet, the pouring of the milk suggests, time is also moving on. The stillness in the painting frames the very present now which gives the viewer a sense of context. Yet, the focus of the piece, in my view, is the continuous stream of milk which invites the viewer to imagine the future. This idea of framing a poem with details rooted in the moment allows me to elevate one precise image as a focal point of a piece. This intrigues me.

You’re sitting outside in a crowded place, peoplewatching. What’s going through your head?
Do I look like a weirdo? Is that person looking at me? Oh look they’re in love. I can never be loved. Ha ha that person reminds me of my son. I’m so worried for the health of this planet. I wish I brought a book.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
My grandmother with her very imaginative stories that brought in everything she knew or heard, wove it all together and then added flourishes based on what I was asking for.

Who do you think is the most misunderstood historical figure?
Humans excel at misunderstanding. I suspect anyone who has reached any sort of celebrity status has been misunderstood (sometimes in their favour). Monty Python’s Life of Brian outlined some plausible misunderstandings of Jesus of Nazareth. In general I suspect the more people have heard of someone the more misunderstood they are. But every single person burned as a witch was also tragically misunderstood.

Describe your perfect sandwich.
Fresh grainy bread. Avocado, cherry tomatoes, pepper, rocket and tamari roasted sunflower seeds.

OR

Latvian kibbled rye bread, homemade salsa verde, roast pumpkin.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
More than anything I want them to enjoy it. I mean sometimes I wish I could cause a revolution or open people’s minds, or get people to feel more empowered and reflect more. I would like to be the cause of people’s increased empathy and of more caring and sustainable communities. But all of that is too grandiose to really motivate me. As I write my immediate concern is hoping someone enjoys reading.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
The gap is always there. I don’t know how long it takes, sometimes a week and sometimes decades and then I eventually try to convince myself that’s not a gap it’s just a lacy effect or something. I’ve not written perfection yet but I take heart in sometimes spotting tiny flaws even in the best works by “real writers.”

What does your perfect day look like?
It’s a sunny day in Adelaide and the vegan festival is on. After a refreshing swim at the beach, I meet my friends at the festival and we spend a long slow midmorning agonising over all the perfect ideas for lunch and dessert. Afterwards we grab a really fancy gin and tonic and listen to a local band while lying under a tree talking over how damn good life is. Someone comes past and says “hey I read your story you are so talented” I laugh modestly. I half-drowse the warm afternoon away, so calm that a ring-tail possum comes down from the tree to make my acquaintance. Later on, there are more gigs at a cute little bar where we know everybody. I get a lift home and fall asleep to the sound of my cat purring.

What’s the last book you didn’t finish reading, and why did you put it down?
I have a weird OCD thing about committing to a book. I can’t remember ever not finishing (even books they forced us to read at school, even academic books I have to read a chapter of for study). I have to admit sometimes if I am finding it boring and frustrating I “cheat” by speed reading angrily. I won’t publicly name-and-shame the last book I did that to because I have a lot of empathy for new writers (like myself) who are still working on their best possible voice.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
There are a lot of those, but I am going to highlight Anna Smaill whose novel The Chimes just blew me away a few years ago but doesn’t seem to have been as widely read as it deserves.

What surprising reactions have you gotten to your work?
I wrote a dystopian story where the main character was a kangaroo and a few people have decided that it is “fantasy” and very confusing. I almost gave up on the story even though my son and I really love it but then my wonderful writers’ group understood it and gave me some constructive tips and encouraged me to try again. So I will.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
Even though I am a word person and not at all a visual person I am aesthetically and morally influenced in my writing by the stained-glass work of Amber Micklem, especially a piece she made for me called The Husky. Amber has been my best friend since high school and she always believed I would be a writer. Her stained-glass work is unapologetically weird, contradictory and with fantastical features. She goes for life over perfection every time and her images really live and lift your mood. Looking at The Husky over the years made me feel that I should back myself more and write, it’s also encouraged me to dare to put in little Easter eggs or in-jokes in my work, to aim for life over flawlessness, to be contradictory and unapologetically weird when I write. In Amber’s stained glass the pieces have to fit together, they have to be cut to line up and there’s a border around the whole so it does not fall apart. So I can write all the contradictions I want but it needs to fit and hang together.

You're sitting outside in a crowded place, peoplewatching. What's going through your head?
I'm not as much a people watcher as I am a—I'm not sure what to call it—people analyzer? Empathizer? I want to understand the why behind a person, the things that make them tick, light them up, hold them back. I do the same thing to myself, a sort of restless interrogation sifting through my motives, desires, fears. I'm by no means especially skilled at this, but I really believe in the possibility of empathetic curiosity.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
Not the first, but I had a powerful experience reading Naomi Alderman's The Power a while back. If you haven't read it, the gist is that in the near-future, women are suddenly able to produce electricity from their fingers, which quickly leads to massive social upheaval. I'm reading it as a father of four daughters, married to a woman, I'd thought about this issues a lot—I thought I got it, right? I thought I understood the problem, the facts, the figures on sexual violence, and then I read a scene where a character, Tunde, is hiding out on a rooftop and a woman finds him there and closes off his exit. Nothing happens, but I felt my stomach drop—the potential, the possibility of violence. Her book allowed me to access and feel it in such an urgent, visceral way.

Who do you think is the most misunderstood historical figure?
"Most misunderstood" is a difficult qualifier, but I'll say Jesus, simply because the transformation from what he seems like on the page to American religious political symbol requires a series of complicated mental gymnastics I still don't entirely understand.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
I think my work is typically more interrogative and question-based; there's no hidden "answer" you need to find. I remember Oprah asking Cormac McCarthy this about The Road and he said he supposes he just wants his readers to be a little more thankful, a little more appreciative of what they have, and I found that profound. I love the awareness I feel after I've read or watched something beautiful, like my eyes are sharpened, my thinking more interesting and clear. I'd love for readers to experience that.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
I don't know that it ever happens, honestly. Rarely does the work as I imagine it remain static as I'm getting it on the page. It changes and morphs and mutates throughout the process. Really, I'm just going by feeling. What feels true? What feels right? That's how I know. At some point along the way, what's on the page might be different than what was in my head, but it feels more true than the early vision. That's okay. That's part of it.

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down?
It's rare that I don't finish a book. I don't know if that's a weakness or a strength. Early on, I was taking a course on William Faulkner and I just hated Absalom, Absalom! I mean, I despised it for 297 pages straight, and then the last 3 pages happened and it made the entire rest of the book worth it. It's one of my favorites of his now. I think about that when I'm slowing down, that even if I'm not particularly enjoying a book, I want to give it its chance. Maybe it will surprise me. I did quit Kenneth Goldsmith's Soliloquy in college. There, I'm glad I got that off my chest.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
In certain small circles, he has it, but I really wish Gene Wolfe were more widely known and read. I finished his Book of the New Sun this past year, and it's an almost indescribable reading experience, but he sort of gets dismissed as a genre writer. That's a topic for another time, but the false division between what is "genre" and what is "literary" really set me off course as a young writer, so I suppose I hold out some kind of hope for the collapse of that. Most writers we might feel tempted to dismiss, whatever your tastes, probably deserves closer reading, on some level.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
I've got this weird thing where once in a while I'll watch movie trailers to try to get my story-mind going, looking for atmosphere and feeling. I've done this for years, and it's actually been a really fruitful practice. It seems to get my brain firing as I look for connections between disconnected images, because that's all a trailer is, right? It's just hints and glances, trying to get you wondering. But then, when I turn to the page, all of a sudden, lots of story possibilities seem to open up. It's incredibly helpful. That often disappears once I've seen the actual film, though. Then I've got to go looking for new trailers.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
While their work is not strongly reflected in my own, Marc Chagall and Frida Kahlo are the artists I was raised on. Both their work exemplifies a vibrancy and a rawness in their bold use of color, subject matter, and expression. While both artists approached their work in different fashions and are considered different styles, I can see parallels in how they expressed their culture, world view, hardships and emotions through their work. In my private work I might explore these elements, but it takes the most vulnerable of artists to give that part of themselves to the public eye. I am not yet as bold or daring as they are.

What’s the last book you didn’t finish reading, and why did you put it down?
Wanderers by Chuck Wendig. One morning some people wake up and without any explanation begin walking east. They cannot be physically stopped. Their skin cannot be penetrated. And they don’t sleep. Is it a virus? A religious calling? This book approaches this odd phenomenon from so many angles—the government, scientific researchers, the loved ones of the walkers, and the church. However, it was too long for me and I wasn’t getting answers in time so…I confess…I looked up the ending online to get resolution. I’m not proud of it, but I gave the book 15 hours of my time and didn’t feel gripped enough to give it the 15 more it would take to finish it.

What does your perfect day look like?
For the last year and a half I’ve lived with my partner in our van-home we built ourselves. My perfect day is waking up early on a forest service road, hearing regional birds of that area (which is ever changing as we travel!) and reading. Eventually my partner will wake, make a cup of coffee, and rejoin me in bed with his own book. I take these mornings for granted, but now, when asked about my perfect day, I see the perfection in these mornings. When we’re ready—at an end of a chapter, or when the sun is high enough—we’ll find a trail nearby to hike and talk about our books, where we’ll travel to next, or fun facts about the area we’re in. We’ll spend the day observing the landscapes, the wildlife, and the culture of an area. We watch the sunset from a forest service road or overlook before finding a cozy spot in the woods to park. We make dinner together, I have a phone date with a girlfriend from the rooftop deck watching the stars and return to the coziness of home to finish the day watching a sci-fi movie. That’s my perfect day, which is why I feel all the more grateful and lucky to have lived more perfect days over this last year and a half than ever before in our lives together.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
Right now there are so many companies, advertisements, and websites vying for attention, counting the milliseconds a scroller stops on their ads. I’m not interested in entering that fight--for how can art win against the tantalizing and bright 5-second videos and cat memes? I would like to provide viewers the true delight of spending not seconds, but possibly a whole minute resting their eyes on one image and allowing their thoughts to calm, their breath to be observed, and a slowness to overcome the pull of multi-tasking. What better gift to give someone? And what better reason to create artwork? Maybe the beauty of that moment will stay with them the rest of the day. I know it does for me when I encounter art that speaks to me.

You’re sitting in a crowded place, peoplewatching. What’s going through your head?
I have to admit, I truly enjoy peoplewatching. It allows me to plant myself in their heads and wonder what their life is like. I often do this at every crowded place I visit. I understand that everyone's life is special, that we all have hopes and dreams and issues that we're dealing with and I'm curious to know how the people around me deal with their issues. I wonder too about how our hopes and dreams compare, and this is where I'm mostly surprised. Another thing I enjoy about peoplewatching is the intricacies of their nuanced movements. Small gestures that mean so much. These gestures, which I deliberately insert into my works, add so much depth to my characters and stories, making them seem more real than not.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
I believe that was Arthur Golden. He so masterfully wrote Eastern characters as if he belonged in that world and laced his stories with its foreign intricacies, folktales, and traditions. Memoirs of a Geisha was a book that tremendously opened my eyes to the world due to its rawness. For one, I felt connected to the characters who shared a traditional upbringing similar to my Middle Eastern one, and at the same time, exposed the dark secrets that lingered just beneath the surface of those societies. I never thought I could be brave enough to highlight the truths of my society had it not been for books like Memoirs of a Geisha. It also allowed me to understand a different culture than my own and appreciate it wholeheartedly.

Describe your perfect sandwich.
You can never go wrong with a beef shawarma sandwich stuffed in pita bread with some pickles, onion, and drizzled with tahini. My favorite sandwich to make at home is a grilled or roasted turkey sandwich made with sourdough bread, fig spread, and four types of cheese (mozzarella, swiss, cheddar, and gouda or muenster). Mmmmm.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
Because my work focuses on a foreign culture, namely Palestinian and Middle Eastern, I want to show how at the end of the day, despite our differences, we are all a part of humanity. All humans have hopes and fears. We all want to be happy. We all starve for life. We all have the capacity to love and hate, even though our traditions and languages are different. I want people to connect with my characters regardless of their historical background, ethnicity, race, gender, or religion.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
It takes me around 1-2 months to complete a rough draft and then several months to revise/rewrite depending on the feedback I receive from my agent, beta readers, and critique partners.

What’s the last book you didn’t finish reading, and why did you put it down?
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Although I'm a huge fan of science fiction (I write in this genre too) I couldn't get over the absurdity of Andy Weir's novel, his writing style, and his characters. The protagonist, albeit a scientist and teacher, was portrayed through his actions to be anything but. I also did not enjoy the ending.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
Naguib Mahfouz. Although he won the Nobel Prize in 1988, his works are timeless and span the ages, but after his death in the early 2000s, he's fallen off the map. His Cairo Trilogy is a masterpiece in understanding characters. A newer author that I think needs more recognition is Mexican author Sofia Segovia whose book The Murmur of Bees captivated me from its first page until the end. Ms. Segovia's book has taught me how to blend the fantastical and real into my stories in a traditional setting. Her writing is also mesmerizing.

What surprising reactions have you gotten to your work?
I'm currently on submission with my novel and a few big four editors, specifically two who represent Booker and Pulitzer prize books, "devoured" my manuscript and described it as "evocative" and "engaging". Although in the end they didn't have the capacity to take it on, I was still very appreciative to have this feedback from these wonderful editors. My acquaintances describe my work as "visual" and "beautiful" and I still doubt their praises to this very day.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
The movie Pan's Labyrinth opened my eyes to magical realism in movies. I loved that movie because it wittingly blended magic into a dark reality, shaping the bleak world of an innocent young girl into a somewhat beautiful fantasy. From the moment I watched the movie, I was hooked and have ever since infused my own work with magical and fabulist elements.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
For twenty years, I’ve worked as a university professor to have the salary I need to write and produce independent films. This career has afforded me opportunities to hire and teach student assistants, and have access to equipment and library resources for research. It also means I’ve spent a lot of time teaching others about the creative process, and shaping classes, curricula, and departments into spaces where filmmakers can create. I’ve literally taught thousands of people how to be creative and collaborative. This can be depleting. In the past three years particularly, I’ve needed time to recover from some significant cognitive disability challenges. This has meant rebuilding and reimagining my creative practice in its entirety.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn changed my frequency after I read it. It was a book that greeted me when it first came out – like a neon beacon pinging READ ME YOU QUEERDO when I saw it at the bookstore as a teenager. I read it in my early 20’s and tripped out on the darkness, the brooding protagonist, the piercing critique of religion, the celebration of otherness, non-normative bodies, and general freakery. So much tension and darkness that the pages ooze black. More recently, I revisited that brilliant balance of speculative fiction, brooding darkness, sparkling satire, and biting social commentary with N. K. Jemisin’s The City We Became. Both are books I’ve shared so much I’ve lost copies and had to buy them again.

What word do you feel should be brought back into popular usage?
Lover. With a long R. Which is either cringe, or sexy, or embarrassing, or all three. That makes it potently worth reviving! I’m also a fan of “fractal” which adrienne maree brown reimagines in her earth-shaking / earth affirming works, particularly Emergent Strategy. Rooting in the connection, legacy, and change-making power between others is love.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
I write quickly and often run to a keyboard to get the words down. I began writing in cursive on paper so I trained myself to think through what I would say before I did so on the page. And that still stands, even in digital formats. The same happens in my filmmaking practice. As a 16mm filmmaker, you must think through the shot and the edit before you wind the Bolex camera or crank through thousands of feet of work print to find a clip. Even though I now work in digital film and write at a keyboard, I still pre-plan in journals, transcripts, and storyboards. When I finally write the piece, I leave those plans behind and burn through a first draft quickly at the computer. Then I step away. I take time to think about it, sitting with the memory of the essay, poem, or film, and finally return to the screen to refine. I share the piece with friends whom I trust and who can be brutally honest and affirming equally. Emotions drive my work and preserving those feelings means seeing the piece as a whole with each edit. This method requires a lot of memory holding and with my latest disability challenges, this process has needed a lot more time to achieve. I’m finding the way through by embracing imperfection, self-forgiveness, and patience.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan 1961-1991 edited by Ellis Martin and Zach Ozma with an introduction by Susan Stryker is a gift from the trans universe for all of eternity. At the beginning of the COVID 19 pandemic, my partner Chris and I began reading this book to each other. We read Lou’s words out loud, mostly at home but sometimes in public space like parks, at the beach, or on a bench on a busy sidewalk. During lockdown, amidst the depravations, the losses, the horrors of it all, Lou Sullivan’s curiosity and lived pleasure was a portal. Lou began keeping a journal at a young age and his archive of words, edited by Martin and Ozma, are magnificent. Before he died, Lou knew his journals would be shared. And even before, in the early days of his teenage years in his burgeoning gender fuckery, he writes with clarity and intimacy. Lou’s words unlock the mechanisms of a joyous extrovert, needing love, wanting clarity in his gender journey, fighting for gender affirming care, and carving a path of knowledge and resource-sharing for trans people. He gave me hope during these dark times and his sexiness was infectious and reflected this T4T love between me and my person. When I touch this book, I feel such joyous energy. The memory of reading Lou’s words, with and to Chris, is one I will forever cherish, and we still talk about Lou, like an old friend whom we miss.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
I have a lasting desire to engage with subjectivity as a political act for change. To put the viewer or reader in the mind of the protagonist means that they can see or imagine how and why that person feels as they do. I use this method as a tool to explore race, gender, sexuality and dis/ability. In film, I do this with sound primarily and like to work asynchronously or with subjective sound design to ‘enter’ the mind and body of a character. With writing, I am doing the same. I have been drawn to films that do this -- express the joy of living, the breath in wonder, the fear and anxiety of life in this capitalistic, racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic hellscape. Films that foundationally allowed me to see what was possible included works by Barbara Hammer, Marlon Riggs, Anita Chang, Trinh T. Min-ha, Agnes Varda, Jane Campion, Chick Strand and Derek Jarman. At the same time, I love color and vibrancy and Pedro Almodóvar singularly introduced me to visual pleasure and characters who (queerly) jumped off the screen. Seeing his films in my local cinematic arthouse as a queer / trans teenager, who would take years to come out, gave me hope.

You’re sitting outside in a crowded place, peoplewatching. What’s going through your head?
How interesting/difficult/weird it is to imagine all these people's life stories and how I'm likely little more than a passing thought and/or a curious environmental detail, if that, from their perspectives.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
Tricky to remember the first, but Emily Dickinson, John Steinbeck, Virginia Woolf, Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, J.D. Salinger, and F. Scott Fitzgerald would be some of the first ones.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
A beneficial lasting impression, a sense of intellectual companionship and growth, joy.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
It varies from minutes to years and as I evolve as a person, a work that was previously finished can become unfinished.

Name a book/author/artist you feel deserves more recognition.
Lætitia Sadier. Loma. French Kicks. John Field, particularly his nocturnes.

What surprising reactions have you gotten to your work?
”I like it.”

You're sitting outside in a crowded place, peoplewatching. What's going through your head?
Yikes...plotting my escape? I'm not a huge fan of crowds, but if I'm far enough back I'll be trying to figure out who's in love. I'll also be scoping out who's wearing what because I probably want to steal your fashions.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
A friend in high school lent me an Ellen Hopkins book and it was the first time I was exposed to poetry that broke with traditional forms and crafted a beautiful yet relatable story. I look forward to introducing my nieces to Hopkins' books once they're old enough.

Describe your perfect sandwich.
I'm a huge (vegan) cheeseburger fan, but since so many people argue that burgers are a separate category from sandwiches: grilled sandwich with peanut butter, shredded carrots, and sriracha. It's got sweet, salty, hot, crunchy, and spicy all wrapped up in one buttery delicious bite.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
Some of my work is created for or about specific people and experiences—for those people, I'm always hoping they'll listen enough to feel things from my perspective. For perfect strangers I'm hoping they take what as much as needed when they read my poetry or view my art—whether that's the feeling of connection to someone with a similar experience, opening their minds to something they hadn't considered, or simply getting a laugh out of one of my more satirical pieces.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
Some poems hit me all at once—one small item or event sparks a single phrase, and the entire poem builds off of itself in about an hour's time. Others, take months to perfect. Tiny pieces here and there pop up, then many days are spent working>mulling>reworking the piece until it looks only vaguely similar to where it started. My poems that start out as fuzzy beginnings often merge with each other into a single piece.

What does your perfect day look like?
Coffee and homemade breakfast, relaxing with my partner, an out-of-the-house activity either in nature or window shopping, fast food fries of any variety, cooking an overly ambitious dinner for two that I never get the timing right for, and finally movie night on the couch.

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down?
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn was gifted to me by a coworker many years ago. I've tried three or four times to get through the book, and it's always been a disappointment to realize a month (or three...) later that I've completely forgotten where I even set the book down. I think it's difficult for me to connect to the writing since the narrator feels very disconnected from not only his society but the modern human experience itself. But I just keep picking it back up hoping to make it a little further than last time!

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
The Anomaly by Michael Rutger was a great read! This is a book I often recommend to people who want something quick but highly entertaining, or to my friends who claim to "not be readers" since its content is easy to connect with. My favorite description of the book is The X Files meets Indiana Jones.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
Hannibal the TV series was a gruesomely beautiful show. The vibrant imagery has influenced my desire to focus on the textures of our surroundings rather than just a character's response/interactions.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
Yes, I have, but I feel that the most apparent is the emotional tradeoff I have experienced throughout writing. When I first started writing, I was putting my whole being into a poem and not saving space for clear communication between what I wanted to get across and how people were reading my work. My ambition was to be as vulnerable as possible, but the tradeoff was not being understood by my workshop groups, friends, mentors, etc. In addition to lack of clarity, I was trying to unpack my complicated traumas through writing and I blamed myself for not being able to make my experiences understandable when they were not comprehensible to myself. This led me to distrust myself, poetry, and if poetry was right for me. Years later and still, the tradeoff is much less volatile. I come to writing with a much clearer mind and the want to also protect myself while also being honest. The balance of being open and being understood comes at a cost of conserving my most fragile feelings, even if I do wish to share them. This took me a long time to realize that in order for me to sustain myself within this art, I must save who I am. I cannot give it all away because I will have nothing left.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
Oh gosh, months or years even! My poem “Gender Desert” was something quite different two years ago than it is now which is a beautiful thing. I really enjoy watching my poetry grow up and I can never find myself feeling like a poem is finished after only working with it for a few days or weeks. At the center of each poem I write is a question that I have been thinking about for years so the answer is constantly shifting. When I imagine a piece, it’s usually what I think is the answer to the question I have been reflecting on. But instead of answering what I sought out to answer, I actually find myself exploring an idea adjacent to that question. I do not think that I ever truly answer a question I am asking myself, but I build a complete pile of poems that work around the question over the course of a few years.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
So many authors, books, and artists deserve more! But I would like to shine some more light on the brilliant Selah Saterstrom and Irene Sola. Both of these authors inspire my own process so much that thanking them would not be enough. Saterstrom’s work is beyond this world, constantly asking so much of its readers and it delivers so much back. Sola’s recently translated book, when i sing, mountains dance, is beauty and I just fell in love with everything about it. Both of these authors write fiction and I turn a lot to authors and genres outside of poetry for inspiration and creative encouragement. Highly, highly recommend reading books by both Saterstrom and Sola.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
A visual work that I loved was Mungo Thomson’s American Desert (for Chuck Jones). Thomson erases the famously destructive, chaotic cat and mouse scenes between the characters Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner from the cartoon, Road Runner. All that is left is these beautiful scenes of the desert: alone, vulnerable, and intimate. What American Desert (for Chuck Jones) brought up for me was how to remold a story that I was incredibly familiar with. If a story is stripped of its most excessive, of what it thinks it wants to portray, what is it saying? The violence between Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner obstructed these beautiful depictions of the abandoned desert that I had never noticed before. Radically shaping a story comes from peeling away the parts that I thought were essential to it and realizing that what is there after that process is what I was after.

Do you have a creative routine - a ritual that helps get you in the creative zone?
In order for me to be able to write creatively, I need to feel safe and then comfortable. I cannot write anywhere, but my room. My room has always been a space I created and cared for for myself, so I do all my writing in there. I then typically light a candle a (my favorite candles are from Queer Candle Co.) and put on soft lighting. Lastly, I always write on my bed. A desk seems too formal for me.

What surprising reactions have you gotten to your work?
A few years ago, I thought I wrote this beautiful poem about my relationship to my grandfather. My grandfather loved buffets, so my family and I would often go to restaurant buffets with him. I thought I wrote these imagistic, savory descriptions of the food at the buffet, but when my workshop at that time read it, they were disgusted (but intrigued) by depictions of the food! I was really shocked, but looking back at the poem, the phrases “rubbered noodles” and “milky corn” are not appetizing.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
Time for creativity was not in the cards for me. I had to work, we had debts, my family was not okay, my kids were not okay, I was sick for a long time without knowing why. I was stubbornly creative in the margins, trying to carve out a reality where I could write all the time without the world crashing down, but the world crashed down anyway.

Now, I have all kinds of time to write, and that’s all I do, all the time, always. But I’m confined to a bed or a chair, I have pain and brain trauma that dogs every thought, and I’m reliant on other people for almost everything. I can’t work outside the home, can’t teach, can’t perform; I rarely see or speak to people I’m not related to. I’d say that’s a pretty steep tradeoff, but I didn’t write this script.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
I think Langston Hughes was probably the first poet that made me think outside my own head, and my own view of the world. When I was eleven I was selected to give a graduation speech to our sixth grade class, and I struggled. My life at that time was hard and my memories of school were not all great. My English teacher gave me “Mother to Son” as inspiration and I ended up building my speech around it, a suburban white girl in an inner-city school reciting “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair” unironically, because that’s how it felt, standing at that podium with my trauma, trying to draw meaning from it all—and not just for myself, but for an entire class of outgoing middle-schoolers. I was learning that poetry can be a voice greater than its maker, can bridge difference and distance, can pay it forward, can speak for movements, can be used for more than just expressing the self.

What surprising reactions have you gotten to your work?
Once out of the blue a college student chose to analyze the feminist themes in one of my poems for a course, and sent me the essay. I wrote plenty of essays like that in my day, so finding my work at the heart of one, by someone I’d never met, was a really cool feeling.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
Don’t give up. Listen to your heart and your gut in equal measures. Be kind. Be sensitive, be raw, be broken if you must, it’s only life. Find beauty even in the dark. Find meaning in entropy. Keep looking. Hold on. It gets better. But wait! There’s more…