Having old friends means you had to be making friends from the beginning — from birth. From the friend from elementary school who first sat next to you on the first day of school, until you were able to live independently on your own where the world is your oyster. Until you realize that everything is not as black and white as people would make it seem.

Old friends come in many shapes and forms — childhood best friends, siblings, parents, pets, even imaginary friends. When you ask the question “what is an old friend,” the simple truth is that an old friend is not a single person or object. It can be anything or anyone whom you confide in, you share your joys and sorrows with, and you can be yourself around without any fear of judgment. Human beings form these bonds of connection trying to feel less isolated in this vast world we call home.

Having old friends is like having a treasure box filled with memories and experiences that you have shared with someone over a long period. Throughout my childhood, I had one best friend I will cherish forever. I always had my best friend by my side. Even though it may seem crazy, I used to tell her everything before I told anyone else. Her name was Yancey, and she was my best friend and my first pet. Together, we grew up. There was no separating us from each other. Together, we accomplished everything.

When I first got Yancey, she was a puppy small enough to fit in the palm of my hand. She would go everywhere I went, whether that was running after me in the backyard, or me refusing to get out of her cage until she fell asleep. Yancey would always greet me when I returned from school and we would spend every second of the day playing without a care in the world. She always knew when I was upset, and she knew how to comfort me.

When I was in my last year in middle school. I started to notice a change in Yancey’s behavior. She started to slow down, she didn’t talk for a while, and she barely ate her food. One day when I gave Yancey her dinner, I noticed a large bump on her side and called for my grandmother.

“I’ll take her to the doctor tomorrow and I’ll see what they say,” she said.

The next day when she returned, the look on her face said it all. I didn’t want to lose my best friend. Not yet. There were so many things that I wanted us to do together and I wasn’t ready to let her go.

“The vet says it’s leukemia. There are only two options for her.”

I listened to her speak while I gently stroked Yancey’s cheek. I tried my best to hold back my tears because if I let them slip, I would have had a difficult time getting them to stop, and I wanted to be strong for Yancey. I knew it would be selfish of me to let her suffer.

“I don’t want her to suffer anymore.” I said.

“I know it’s a hard decision to make, but you made the right choice,” she said.

She stood by my side, and I nodded my head, but my voice was caught in my throat. I looked down at Yancey for the last time as I leaned down to kiss her cheek and whispered to her.

“Goodbye Yancey, you will always be my best friend and I love you,” I said.

After I finished high school, I wanted to be a loner for the majority of college life, but my grandmother stopped my goal of being a loner. I’m glad she did. After I lost the only friend I had, my grandmother wanted to make sure that I was being social and making new memories with new friends and not shutting myself in. If Yancey was still alive today, she would have wanted me to make new friends, enjoy the college experience, and get into all kinds of crazy adventures.

If you have old friends in your life, cherish them and hold onto them tight, because they are the ones who will always be there for you, no matter what.

Yasmeen Owens
Associate Editor
NonBinary Review

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?
Just words! Words are my tones and colors!

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received?
Ten years old! I drew and wrote dialog for a comic book I created for my brothers and sisters about a Mexican Duck named Miguel who wore a huge Sombrero hat that his sidekick, a mouse named Jose lived in, and tormented him with witty asides.

What is the single best sentence you've ever read?
“Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus” (“Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love”) Catullus (Roman Poet; 54-84 BC)

What is your most evocative memory?
Watching my children being born!

What is your biggest creative doubt?
My writing skills won’t match my vison!

What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
Write what you know!

What change would you like to see in the publishing world?
Less novels by people with MFA training who only focus on their inner voices!

What is the most unbelievable thing that has ever happened to you?
In my book, Protecting New Jersey’s Environment: From Cancer Alley to the New Garden State, I relate a story where I was asked to attend a late-night public meeting with New Jersey lobstermen. The Governor had agreed to my recommendation based on my field sampling of Atlantic Ocean lobsters and subsequent chemical analysis that we advise the consuming public that some lobsters in our coastal waters were laced with the carcinogen, dioxin, from a chemical plant that made Agent Orange used in the Vietnam War to defoliate jungles. On a Friday night after dark, we drove to the Jersey shore and went into to an old fish factory and met with a hundred angry lobstermen. The Governor felt that if people were to get bad news it should happen in person. The fishermen had come in directly from their boats and were all in rain gear and overalls and filled a small conference room. We made our way to the front of the room and I explained what we’d done and what information we’d release to the public. If there ever was going to be a lynching it was going to happen that night. Then my boss, Tom Burke, who like me grew up in Jersey City had a good instinct for reading a crowd asked, “How many of you guys fought in Vietnam?” A lot of head nodding and the room got quiet. He told them that the chemical in the lobsters came from an Agent Orange plant on the Passaic River and dredge spoils from near the plant had been dumped in the ocean contaminating the lobsters. Agent Orange was the chemical sprayed on the jungles of Vietnam by the US Airforce in Operation Ranch Hand to defoliate the jungles and make it easier to kill the enemy. Unfortunately, it was extremely dangerous and made thousands of GIs sick as well. He finished with the question, “Would you like your kids to go through that as well?” Suddenly the anger in the crowd subsided like a fallen wave. I then told them that we weren’t going to tell people not to eat lobsters but only just change the ways they prepared and cooked it to remove the toxin. After that we said goodnight and slid quickly through the fishermen and out the back door. We survived and did our job. I learned a lot that night about human nature and how to swallow my fear and live in the world especially when I’m in a mob that wants to kill me.

“Writing for me is about experience and imagination both. But without experience and being in the world; I don’t know what I’d write about.”

Whose work do you feel most resembles your own?
Annie Dillard

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
Flying or Base Jumping

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?
You're right! I've always considered myself a generally artistic person. Beyond writing, I dance, play the viola, and dabble in photography. I really wish I could paint or draw, but I unfortunately am stuck at stick figures currently. Hopefully soon. I think if you're creative in one field, or create one kind of art, it'll be easy to create other kinds. All art is tied together by an invisible web of aesthetic meaning!

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received?
I first began writing creative essays when I was quite young- probably in the third grade. I was a little girl with big emotions, and as an avid reader, I felt most connected to words as a medium. I was lucky to have several immensely supportive teachers throughout my time in school, who encouraged me to explore this passion further. My parents were unfortunately not as receptive, but they came around eventually, and I'm so happy to be able to do what I get to do today.

What is the single best sentence you've ever read?
The sentence that gives me chills every time I read it is from a Rita Dove's poem Testimonial- "I gave my promise to the world, / and the world followed me here." I went through a deep depression my first year of college, after moving across the country. In the second week of my Intro to Poetry class, we read Testimonial, and this sentence stuck with me from that point forward. It gave me the strength and hope to get through some of my darkest times, telling me that I needed to trust the universe! I'm a big believer in the power of destiny now- you'll always end up where you need to be.

What is your biggest creative doubt?
My biggest creative doubt is about my inspiration. I'm sure many writers feel this way, but I am at my most prolific when I'm not in a good space mentally. As soon as my mental health improves, my creative inspiration diminishes. Lately, my biggest creative challenge has been cultivating my mental wellbeing and simultaneously finding new ways to stay creative and prolific as an artist!

What change would you like to see in the publishing world?
I think the publishing world makes it really hard for new or younger authors, especially, to break into the field and get their work published. If you don't have an agent, it can often be difficult to cultivate your career as an author on your own, especially when it seems that the publishing industry only accepts insiders or people who already have a "secret sauce." That's why I especially love Zoetic Press's mission- the commitment to amplifying the work of new authors, as well as previously published ones, is what I think we need more of in the publishing world.

Whose work do you feel most resembles your own?
One of my biggest inspirations creatively and personally has been Joan Didion. She has such a clear and precise, yet still creatively powerful, way of writing- I think she's proof that any lived experience can be art if looked at through the right lens. Her take on some of the nation's formative events of the 1960s and 70s is so unique, and so down-to-earth and authentic, really speaking to her background as a journalist. She's also from my home state of California, which doesn't hurt :)

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
Oh, to have unlimited time! Every artist's dream! Given unlimited time, I'd love to take up learning a new language in earnest. I'm a native speaker of Hindi, and have been learning Spanish and French both for the last six years. I'd love to take up German, or Arabic, or maybe even Russian. I've always been big on languages, and would love to experiment with writing creatively in a non-Western language :)

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?
AsI have enjoyed making quilts for my children, nieces, and nephews. Born into a family of artists, I also learned to paint using acrylics, oils, and pen and ink. Through painting I was introduced to the concept of “vignette,” a focus on the intense central detail of a subject, while the surrounding background fades into the untouched paper. It is a concept I try to employ when I write poetry—brief, to the point, leaving the reader to fill in what’s missing.

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received?
My first poems, which I wrote when I was sixteen, were shared only with my family. Two years ago, I successfully submitted three of them to literary magazines and they are included in my current short poetry collection, Remember This Day.

What is the single best sentence you've ever read?
“As if he wants to be flogging me for no reason, as if I am carrying shit inside my cheeks and when I open my mouth to talk, the whole place be smelling of it." – This sentence appears in the opening paragraph of The Girl With the Louding Voice, by Abi Daré, where the protagonist has been summoned by her unkind father.

What is your most evocative memory?
Two memories, the adoption of our two children. They are my world, my writing is for them, everything is for them. And, happily, they know this.

What is your biggest creative doubt?
I worry I will not be able to let go of what I create. I have a certain idea in my mind when I write something, but then it’s released into the world and the world does what it wants with it, interprets it in ways that resonate, identifies with what I’ve written in ways I didn’t intend. But worse, I worry that others will not consider my work worth contemplating at all.

What is the most unbelievable thing that has ever happened to you?
That, easily, is surviving the terror attack in Nice, France in 2016 on Bastille Day. My husband and I found ourselves in the middle of a terror attack that killed over 80 people, including a teenager who had been riding his bicycle and an infant crushed in his stroller. Over 400 were injured. Slightly injured myself, I struggled with the guilt of surviving when so many others hadn’t. In my poem about the attack, “Promenade des Anglais,” which is published in my short poetry collection, Remember This Day, I focus on the importance of therapy for post traumatic stress disorder and on the Buddhist concept of the “pain of the second arrow;” the first arrow is the trauma itself, but the pain of the second arrow is what we inflict on ourselves when we revisit the trauma again and again in our minds.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?
I’ve been writing both poetry and fiction since my college days. I was particularly excited to have my short story “Palindromes” published in NonBinary Review’s Person of Interest Issue #26, and as an episode of their Alphanumeric podcast, because that story was included as the first story in my short story collection titled How We Fracture, which won the Rosemary Daniell Fiction Prize, and will be released by Minerva Rising Press the end of January 2024.

I recently began drafting non-fiction (lyric and braided essays), and creating visual poems, two of which have been published in The Indianapolis Review. I’ve been taking photographs for years, but have just begun collecting supplies for visual art, ever since my dreams revealed particular works of art I might start with—abstract black and white drawings.

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received?
I remember when I was in high school, I wrote a few poems and the beginning of a mystery novel which my younger sister was going to illustrate. But I began seriously writing when I was 17, attending college. I majored in English Literature. In my first semester creative writing class, the teacher Dr. Sandra L. Cuni invited several of the students to a critique group at her house, where we read and discussed our writing. She also helped us organize a public student reading in the college’s theatre, and introduced us to the college’s literary journal, in which I submitted and had poems published. In my senior year, I became editor of that journal. Ms. Cuni unfortunately died at only 36 years of age, when I was in my junior year. A student creative writing award was established in her name, and I won the first award in my senior year, and again ten years later when I returned to college for a degree in computer science.

What is your most evocative memory?
My most evocative memory was of the day 1/9/98. Three things happened that day. I was working as a computer programmer at an international insurance company, and that morning a surprise mandatory meeting was called for all the IT department, and we were not allowed to have our cell phones on during it. The meeting went a long time, and we were offered a large bonus if we signed an agreement to stay with the company until after the century turned. We had extensive legacy systems which couldn’t handle the turn of century in their current form.

My husband was in the hospital at the time, but he was scheduled to go home that day. He'd only been there for rehab to regain his strength after a long hospitalization with an extreme bout of emphysema. When I got back to my desk, there was a message from the hospital, asking me to come as soon as I could to the hospital. I knew immediately that my husband had died.

When I got home from the hospital late that day, I received a phone call from a literary agent to whom I'd submitted my second novel. She said she loved my novel, and would gladly represent me. Over a period of close to a year, she submitted it to various publishing houses. She always forwarded their responses to me, which were very complimentary, but always ended by saying that they didn't think they could publish it. Their responses were in no way helpful because they never cited any problems they saw in the novel. Just that they couldn’t take a risk on publishing it as a first novel.

What is your biggest creative doubt?
That I'll never get the two novels I wrote so many years ago revised and published. Though I did revise the second chapter of my second novel, which I submitted to, and was longlisted for, The Masters Review’s Novel Excerpt Contest. I also submitted the first chapter of that same novel as a standalone story titled “The Floating Child,” which was published in the journal Stirring. That story is the third story in my forthcoming collection How We Fracture.

What is the most unbelievable thing that has ever happened to you?
That at the age of 54 I had already lost two husbands, and that both died at the age of 63. My first husband was 23 years older than me, but my second husband was only 9 years older than me, and his parents, aunts, and uncles all lived well into their 80’s.

What does your creative process look like?
I frequently write down and save ideas for poems, stories, or lyric or braided essays. I write the first drafts of everything (poems, short stories, and yes, entire novels) in longhand on lined legal pads. I love writing by hand. Then I type them into my desktop computer, (yes, I still have one of those), and print them out to revise by hand. I read the printed version aloud, which is another way I catch errors or snags—places that need something more, or less.

I carry my drafts-in-progress and several empty legal pads in my car wherever I go, because I write any time of day, anywhere—a coffee shop, restaurant, doctor’s/hospital waiting room, my parked car. There’s something I like about writing in a background of music and people’s voices. I can easily tune them out, or listen for a time. And as a writer, I’m always looking and listening for things that might go into a poem or a story’s scene.

If I’m at home, I write in silence which is easy to do, because I live alone. Sometimes I listen to classical music at low volume when I write, or write outside on my patio where I hear birds and squirrels. I especially like to write in the park during spring when the fruit trees are alive with bees buzzing—a sound I dearly love.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?
Wait, what? I would never!
OK, in reality: painting (mostly oils), drawing, collage-ish stuff, weird little multimedia projects, digital art, photography, starting to work on some theatre-adjacent stuff (arguably still writing) and some video work

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received?
I don't remember when I first started writing, but I do know I first submitted a poem to a magazine in 6th grade. It was the first in a very long line of rejections.

What is the single best sentence you've ever read?
I'm sure there is one, and I'm sure I don't remember it. Which means a lot more about my memory than about the sentence.

What is your most evocative memory?
See my upcoming memoir for more on that. (Someday!)

What is your biggest creative doubt?
Whether I can really make enough from my art to live on. It's an ongoing debate. I am still alive, however.

What historical time would you most like to live in?
Oh, absolutely none of them. I often find life in the modern world nearly intolerable - for hygienic reasons, among others - and the thought of having to live through historical conditions of bathing and such, well, I can't even. Also, there is now so much more opportunity to know stuff about other people/cultures/times/lives than there was in any past era that the thought of losing that and sinking back into darkness is terrifying.

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down?
I probably finish fewer than half the books I start, because life is short. Some of that's deliberate (nonfiction books that I sieve for what I need). I almost always finish poetry books, though.

Whose work do you feel most resembles your own?
This sounds like a set-up . But I'll go anyway: Sylvia Plath; Danez Smith; Jericho Brown; Ocean Vuong; Natalie Diaz; torrin greathouse. That may be a list more aspirational than real.

What does your creative process look like?
Sometimes I seem to exhaust myself into creation. Or catch myself by surprise. Other times I can't not write--I've probably lost a whole chapbook of works on random scraps of paper that never made it into some more permanent form.

My most persistent writing practice, though, is reading for a while first thing in the morning, followed by writing for a while.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?
Apart from writing poetry and fiction, I am also a singer-songwriter. I’m currently working on three forthcoming albums.

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received?
I wrote my first poem when I was about seven years old. I was with my uncle that day and he thought I must have copied it from somewhere.

What is the single best sentence you've ever read?
There are quite a few. One of them might be “This is my letter to the world/ That never wrote to me.”

What is the most unbelievable thing that has ever happened to you?
That I am here.

Whose work do you feel most resembles your own?
A few. Among them, Pablo Neruda, perhaps.

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
I might start practicing classical piano or classical guitar. I hope to be able to master the complete works of J.S. Bach.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?
I have been involved in theater and performance art for many years. I worked with theater director Herbert Blau and the experimental theater company KRAKEN in the past on works based on Hamlet and on Shakespeare’s sonnets, among other pieces. The Boston Theater Group, a company I co-founded, produced works based on Ovid, Kafka, Shakespeare, Dinesen, Atwood, and contemporary poetry. Currently, I write and perform with Row Twelve Contemporary Music Ensemble.

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received?
I had to be 3 years old – my finger paintings with my nursery school teacher, Teacher Jesse. I think she loved them.

What is the best sentence you’ve ever read?
This is an impossible question to answer – I am a voracious reader, so there are too many sentences I love. But one that comes to mind often is by the poet Shelley: “Life, like a dome of many colored glass,/ Stains the white radiance of eternity.” I puzzle over what this means – are we to long for a life free of all desire (the white radiance of eternity), or are we – especially writers and artists – to shape the dome of many colored glass into the stories and visions of what we all endure and cherish in life?

What is your biggest creative doubt?
I worry that I can’t dig deep enough to reach the emotions, thoughts, and understandings that truly resonate with readers and express those emotions, thoughts, and understandings.

What is your most evocative memory?
My most evocative memory is standing under a towering oak tree on Tappan Square at Oberlin College talking all night to a man I had known at a distance but had not talked with until this particular night. That conversation sealed our fate, and we have been together ever since.

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
I would take up photography in a serious way. Like almost everyone with a smart phone, I love taking photographs, capturing powerful moments (protests against harming the environment, for example); visions of beauty (a red and white striped amaryllis in full bloom in a ray of brilliant sunlight); the faces that move me deeply (new babies in the family and dear friends). But I don’t study photography, and I don’t have a professional camera. I admire those photographers who capture those moments in life that grip us, exhilarate us, and represent the enormous range of life on earth.

What change would you like to see in the publishing world?
I think the trend toward publishing voices that have been excluded in the past should continue and grow. We need representation of all human experience, stories that can open us to each other’s realities so that we reject othering and heal the divides that threaten to destroy us.

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received?
I’ve written for as long as I’ve known how to read—since I was about five years old—so I’m not quite sure how to decide which bit of my writing to count as my first work. The first thing I can remember writing was a childhood story—I must have been around seven—about a forest elf who lived in a wood pile and a majestic, noble bobcat. My hippie parents loved it. If we’re going with the first work I wrote as an adult and showed to anyone else, I suppose that would be the short story I hurriedly wrote when I was twenty-nine as my portfolio piece for a writing workshop application. I got into the workshop, so I suppose the teacher received it well enough. I don’t know if I’d still be writing—or at least not writing work I feel good enough about to submit to literary magazines—without the support and encouragement I received from that teacher, so, while I doubt that particular story will ever again see the light of day, I’d say its reception has served my literary career over the five or so years since then very well.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?
I have, quite unexpectedly, found myself beginning to write songs in recent months. I’d started learning to play the guitar a couple of years ago, and recently it’s become an integral part of my daily life. I’ve been finding that, when I get frustrated or stuck in a story I’m trying to figure out how to write, it’s an incredible balm to set my story notebook and laptop aside, pick up the lyric notebook and guitar, and spend some time working out how a different set of words should fit to a tune. I have yet to record or publicly perform any of my songs, but I’ve also been finding that it’s incredibly soothing to make art without thinking about how I will release it or how it will be received. I do have ideas for a suite of songs I might make as a companion piece to go with the book I’m currently drafting, and I might try to record that music to release alongside the book in the event that it ends up being published.

What is your biggest creative doubt?
Almost every time I write something new, I wonder how it could possibly be of any value to anyone else. I suppose that’s not so much creative doubt—I never doubt my creative process as it relates to being of value to me, because I have worked through a lot of the strangeness in my head by putting it down on the page—as doubt in my ability to create something other people will be able to relate to in any way. My fiction tends to be intensely personal, and to take place in very small, interior settings. It’s always surprising to find that other people—editors, and sometimes readers who reach out to me to let me know they liked something I’ve had published—can fit their own imaginations and emotions into my literary crawlspaces.

What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
I think every time anyone has told me to write what I know I have thought “oh, of course that’s what one is supposed to do,” and then immediately proceeded to write something that I do not know but would like to learn. I think most of my fiction comes from a place of not knowing. Or, maybe, a place of seeking unknowing while being aware that I’ll never really be the mystic type. There’s something immensely satisfying about writing a story and feeling like the process of finishing it taught me something I didn’t know when I started.

What change would you like to see in the publishing world?
I would like to see every magazine, publisher, and other types of entities involved in publishing take a strong stance against AI. It seems like every day I read about some new and disheartening way in which publishing companies are using AI to devalue the work of their own writers and staff. I would love to see everyone refocusing on the human work that makes publishing feeling like something worth being part of.

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
I’d really like to learn to weave baskets. They’re such a satisfying type of object. I love things that are both useful and beautiful. One day I shall grow a hedge of the right types of willow varieties for weaving, and hopefully that will motivate me to learn how the weaving is done. I’d love to learn how to build an acoustic guitar, too.

What is your most evocative memory?
A few summers back, on the first full day I spent in the company of the person who would shortly thereafter become central to my life, I took them to the most magical secret beach that can only be reached by climbing down a steep rock face with the aid of an old rope attached to a twisted pine (I was, it must be admitted, trying to show off the delights of the place where I live to this person who did not then live here). The water off these wind-blasted Atlantic beaches remains frigid even at the height of summer, and the rest of our party—myself included—had to run, screaming, into the surfbefore we lost our nerve. This singular person, though—to whom I, thankfully, am now married—quietly but inexorably walked in backwards and, slowly spreading their long arms like wings, slowly toppled into the bone-chilling waves with the most astonishingly beatific smile on their face. Somehow that image of them in that moment etched itself indelibly into my mind. I think of it often.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?
I’ve been getting into video editing lately, though I’m not sure if it’s to the level of art yet. I have a YouTube channel called Meter&Mayhem with an interview series called the Meter Cute Interviews. I refuse to put too much time or effort into being good at it because that’s a stress I’m not interested in. I also used to play music a lot. I was in a band called the Pitbull Stringband for about ten years, but now I mainly just sing a little around the house. Is gardening an art? It kind of feels like it sometimes.

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received?
Thanks to Google and the archives at Kenyon College, I know that the first work I remember producing was on Monday, September 19, 1983 and I would have been eight years old. I went with my parents to hear the Irish folk musicians Joe and Antoinette McKenna perform at Kenyon, we went to a lot of folk festivals and concerts together when I was a kid. Monday at school I got bored and wrote an essay about the experience. The only things I remember from it are how Antoinette teased her husband about his driving and all the potholes in the road and also that there was a stepdancer whose face turned red as he danced. I showed the essay to my dad when I got home and his response was “Did you have to write this for an assignment at school?” I was confused by the question because really, I had no idea why I had written it. I still have that experience when people ask me why I write. I feel like I’m that kid again being asked if something is for a school assignment. I have no idea why I write, it just seems like the thing to do and I’m sure sometimes in interviews I give more complex answers about it and they’re all true to an extent, but the real, deep, truest of true answers is that I have no idea why.

What is the single best sentence you've ever read?
I don’t know if it’s the single best, but right now I’m pretty in love with the sentence “We would love to publish your book!” I had been submitting poetry collections since 2009 and recently one has found a home with Kelsay Books and I’m incredibly excited. The Swellest Wife Anyone Ever Had will be available in late summer/early fall. It’s based on the stories of my grandmother, as well as my grandfather’s letters home from WWII. The title comes from something he said to her when his mother and sisters were giving her a lot of shit for not brushing her daughters’ hair and spending more time out in the fields than they thought she should. He was afraid of dying and it was basically his way of saying “don’t let the haters get you down, whatever you’re doing is great because you’re the one doing it.” I keep thinking of changing it because someone I really respect has told me that it might not have broad appeal. But I think I’ve decided that I don’t care if it has broad appeal. The time for broad appeal has probably passed for my work. If ya’ get it, ya’ get it, and if not, that’s cool too, but I think I’m done changing things to fit what publishing thinks it wants from people like me.

What is your most evocative memory?
Why does the word “evocative” somehow connote dark and mysterious to me? I don’t know if it’s my most evocative memory, but there is a scent that’s been haunting me lately. It reminds me of the early to mid-90s when everything felt full of possibility and also fraught with danger. I smell it in the grocery store, I smelled it at an antique mall this afternoon. My rational mind says that it’s just some cologne that was popular then is popular again or something similar to that. But another part of me is pretty sure that it’s my lost potential mocking and stalking me. (I might be in a bit of a mood right now, sorry.)

What is your biggest creative doubt?
That I’ve wasted too much time trying to make my work fit someone else’s definition of good and that now, as I’m creeping up on fifty, it’s too late for it to ever be truly my own again.

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
Honestly, I don’t know if I’d take up a new hobby if I had unlimited time. I think I’d use that time to devote to the ones I have now that I don’t do as much with as I’d like. The invasive cat’s claw vine has totally taken over my backyard. If I’ve got unlimited time, I’m going after that fucker with a vengeance.

What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
“Never write about [insert the many things people have told me not to write about].” I’ve gotten that kind of advice from so many people about so many different things. The first poetry reading I ever took part in was an open stage sort of thing for the Columbus Literary Gazette in the early 90s and someone said “Never write poems about dogs or roses,” and I was just young enough to believe it. Later, in grad school, it was “don’t write about your grandmother’s death, everybody has a dead grandmother” and “don’t write too many Selkie poems, you don’t want to be known as the Selkie poet” and the list goes on and on. What I wish I would have known then is that you should write about whatever the hell you want to write about and write about it in the way that speaks best to your own soul. Because all that advice? It’s more about what you should or shouldn’t write about to get into the specific literary journals or presses that whoever is giving the advice thinks a person should want to get into at that exact point in time (or maybe ten years prior to it even really). And, sorry to tell you, you can avoid those topics and write the best imitation of published poets that you know how and still not get in (and I feel like many people would object to me saying that it’s imitating, but when we formulate that idea of what good writing is, we’re really looking at past writing to formulate it and, well, there’s an element of imitation in that I think).

What change would you like to see in the publishing world?
Oh, that’s a really tough one because there are so many changes and really, they’re all connected to the world in general, so none are easy fixes. I think maybe the one I’d most like to see is a dismantling of the hierarchy of writing aesthetics. Folks should just write and read what they vibe with and honor and love that, while also, and this is the hard part for some folks, honoring and loving the fact that other people might vibe with something different. Periodically it’ll look like we’re about to catch that wave in the publishing world and then —whoops— we just change who fits where in the hierarchy rather than dismantling the whole damn thing. I’d say “what good does it do us?” but let’s be real, this is capitalism, we all know what good a hierarchy does and who it benefits in the end, right?

What is the most unbelievable thing that has ever happened to you?
I’ve been hit in the back of the head not once, but twice, by a hummingbird. When I lived up in Athens County, we had a Tulip Tree right off the back porch and the hummingbirds would fly in one end of the porch and out the other getting to the tree. It was quite a danger zone when that tree was in bloom!

Whose work do you feel most resembles your own?
My work doesn’t even resemble my own work from piece to piece, so it’s difficult to say who else’s it resembles. I have some that’s heavily influenced by ultra-talk stuff like David Kirby and Mark Halliday and then some are compact almost lyrical narratives like Rita Dove’s. And every once in a while a little spell like friend comes out of my pen and I sound somewhat like Annie Finch.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?
Sculpture, painting, and some music and writing.

What is your most evocative memory?
Two experiences come to mind. First the night i was walking with friends on a railroad trestle bridge at night when a train came along. We were too far out on the bridge to make a run for it so we lay down alongside the tracks. The noise was indescribable and went on for an eternity. Afterwards we were entirely disoriented, but ecstatic to be alive. Another memory: the first time i experienced cirque de soleil. The show was "Vareki". Having never experienced one of their shows before, i had no idea what to expect. When, during one act, the rope performers took off and circled out over the audience...it was truly magical.

What is your biggest creative doubt?
How to communicate my belief that cars are incredibly destructive to our society and to our planet while at the same time being true to my response/ creative process. I don't want to use representation or narration as the source of my work rather i want to create using response to the materials as the driving force. So i have a conundrum at the centre of my work. Over the years, there have been some pieces that started from an idea or a vision, but i hate that feeling of falling away from the vision as the limits of the materials shape the final image. Using response, i am always moving toward what doesn't yet exist. The process is pure--the outcome may not be as pure, but it can then be "framed" or cropped to focus it into a somewhat recognizable image.

What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
I used to try to create a "cohesive" body of work as dictated by galleries which ran counter to my response/creative process . I finally gave up and let the materials take me where they will. Trying to be "cohesive" was way too restrictive.

What is the most unbelievable thing that has ever happened to you?
Survival. I am a survivor of a murder suicide in my family of origin. Prior to that event, i suffered years of beatings, psychological abuse and humiliations. My family disintegrated and i succumbed to addiction. I spent years without understanding my addiction or that i carried the seeds of destruction within myself. I caused much harm during this time and contemplated suicide many times. With the help of my wife and several counselors i finally became self aware and have been able to be the husband and father i should have been. Art was a central part of my survival.

Whose work do you feel most resembles your own?
Hundertwasser. His work has a childlike quality to it and he had strong environmental and architectural visions which i share. I was fortunate to receive funding for a public art project that involved public housing residents and Hundertwasser's idea that apartment residents should be able to paint the area around their windows however they wish. We share a common sense that planners and architects have needlessly created drab or incorrectly scaled urban spaces. Hundertwasser's ideas shaped my response/creative process. And.... Kids art. I love the way kids (especially before they have been told what art should be) reflect our world. Pure expressionism.

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
Not exactly a new hobby, but i would devote much time to music. Mostly song writing and acapella singing. I can't seem to get beyond an inkling of where i might go with it. Wish i had a better voice. Not interested in traditional choral music.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?
I dabble in many artistic disciplines. Within writing, I create novels, short stories, and poetry. My other essential passion is music; I’ve been a drummer for nine years and a percussionist for six and a half. I was a Co-Drumline Captain in high school, and am currently a member of the WWU Percussion Ensemble and the drummer for the Bellingham Community Band. My favorite genre is glam-punk, and I hope to be a drummer/lyricist for a band one day. I’m also an amateur composer (primarily for percussion ensemble) and a photographer.

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received?
I began writing my debut novel, Nautila, at the age of eleven. I finally finished and self-published it at the age of sixteen. Because I was young and self-published, very few people read it, but I am still incredibly proud of that achievement because over the course of that adventure, I essentially taught myself how to write. No one can teach you how to write a novel, and because I taught myself early on, I felt like I had an edge since many writers don’t complete their first novel and gain that experience until they’re a bit older.

What is the single best sentence you've ever read?
It’s a phrase, not a sentence, but I really love this line from Howl (1956) by Allen Ginsberg: “... expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull…” Another favorite is from the beginning of Edgar Allan Poe’s Eleonora (1842): “Men have called me mad, but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence…” Both of these quotes are taped to the walls of my bedroom in vivid font to inspire insanity.

What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
“Keep the audience in mind.” This is excellent advice for the editing phase of writing a book. You should certainly think about how your audience will interpret something, if it will make sense to them, and so on. However, do not consider the audience when writing your first draft. The best work comes directly from inspiration; it’s a conversation between the writer and creativity, not between the writer and the audience (that conversation comes later). Your most genuine work will be written when you’re not writing for anyone or anything but the sake of writing itself. Don’t let an audience’s likes or dislikes hinder the breadth of your creativity.

What change would you like to see in the publishing world?
I would like to see a shift away from blockbusters and toward quality literature. I also think the structure of the publishing industry needs to change, because it’s incredibly difficult to break into the industry, even with experience. People with connections and impeccable social skills get prioritized rather than the best writers, and I think that’s to the detriment of the literary community.

Whose work do you feel most resembles your own?
I change my writing style to match the project I’m working on, so it varies. If I’m working on a gothic horror project, then I’ll read a bit of Anne Rice or Poe beforehand to get in the mood of the genre. For fantasy, anything from Cressida Cowell to Leigh Bardugo and V. E. Schwab. I finished a new novel rough draft a few months ago, and the inspiration for that included Cecil Castellucci’s Beige, Riordan’s Percy Jackson, and Alison Cherry’s Willows vs. Wolverines because it’s a goofy book that takes place at a summer camp and focuses on music. The deeper I got into the project, though, the more I strayed from those influences. Art begets art, so it’s great to start with inspiration and grow away from it as time passes. For poetry, I’m not sure who my influences include… There’s a bit of archaic European influence, for sure, but I feel like I channeled Green Day more than anything else in my debut collection, Killed the Clock. Because I create in multiple art forms, it’s not uncommon for my inspiration to come from a different genre than the one I’m working in.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?
I’m a dabbler. It seems to go in cycles. Right now it’s painting, drawing, some mixed media and book binding.

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received?
I was 6 or 7. My mom, my sister, and I all sent poems into a contest. Mom wrote about JFK. My little sister, who was 4 or 5, wrote about bedtime. I wrote one poem about butterflies, another about cows. All were accepted but mine. Our notification came in a stamped, self-addressed envelope with our poems inside, each stamped with the notice of whether they were accepted. I still have the pastel pink and purple stationery envelope with our handwritten submissions carefully folded inside. I use it as a reminder that rejection is not the last word. Never is.

What is the single best sentence you've ever read?
“Congratulations!” followed by any other sentence always gets my attention.

What is your most evocative memory?
One year for Christmas I conducted a test. I wanted a new teddy bear and I wanted to see if Santa was real. I never spoke a word to anyone of my desire for a new teddy bear. Didn’t write it in a letter, didn’t speak it out loud even to myself, didn’t write it in my diary. That year I got a cute stuffed koala. I called him Theo.

What is your biggest creative doubt?
I have imposter syndrome about pretty much everything. But a few years ago, through Poets and Writers Groups, I joined an online writing group called Moving Mountains, a group of women poets over 50. Their support and feedback have been the greatest source of imposter-free creativity for me.

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
Assuming unlimited resources too, traveling the world.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?
Aside from writing? Yes, of course, like so many other writers, I have carved my way through almost every art form, bravely if not wisely. ‘Express’ is the directive I was given at birth, and how to choose? They are all gorgeous! Painting—sure, give it a shot. Dance—well, that might ultimately take too much discipline. Architecture? I did build a few shacks when I was young. Music! There we go! Not classical—again, too much training, but once I discovered that folk musicians didn’t have to do anything but strum a guitar, I was all over it. And found, to my joy, that what I really did want to do was play guitar, strongly and well. And that’s what I did professionally for 65 years. Writing has come late in the game.

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received?
I believe I was 3 when I created my first work. It was a drawing of a lady with many buttons down the front of her dress. And how was it received? My mother, marveling at it, took it right out of my hands and hung it up so my father could see it when he came home. “No!” I cried. “I haven’t drawn the arms yet!” But she said, “No, it doesn’t need arms, and you’ll ruin it if you do any more.” I remember this well and still burn over it; I think I never quite got over the idea that I wasn’t a good enough judge of my own work—and that the more effort I put into something, the more likely I was to ruin it. Which leads me to—

What is your biggest creative doubt?
–-my biggest creative doubt. Perhaps I want to do too much. Too many words, too many notes, too much philosophizing. Maybe the picture really is better without the arms; after all, mama said so. Maybe publishers turn away from a novel with a 150,000 word count. Maybe my songs need a simpler message. Maybe I will blow the final chord. Maybe I am living on my own private planet.

What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
One piece of creative advice I was often given was to devote myself to one path, and follow it assiduously. And when I see other artists who’ve become wildly successful, I suspect this advice worked well for them. I often admit to myself that so-and-so deserves the reputation of greatness because he/she really is great. Great in the way I will never be. Great as the reward for devotion and discipline beyond my wildest dreams or desires. But it wasn’t going to work for me. I wanted to live—messily, daringly, spaciously. In art (music in this case) I wanted to do what came most easily, without a lot of practicing scales. Now as a writer I just want to write what I want, sidestepping the years of study the writers I most admire have undergone. I don’t recommend my method; I’m just saying that it was the way I chose, and if I ended up limited in my ability to express, still I had a wonderful ride—and a whole lot to express.

Whose work do you feel most resembles your own?
I wouldn’t want to lay it on any other writers that their work resembles my own; rather, I’d say my work resembles theirs, because they’ve been powerful, beloved influences—to the extent that I often feel them reaching down from the dusty shelves of heaven to give me pats of confidence and appreciation. Now, Henry James would likely never read my novels, but in my heart he not only did read them but often helped me find the mot juste. The Brontës gave me a thirst for romance. Anthony Trollope assured me that one need not be a magnificent writer; a fun one was good enough. Jane Austen told me to observe daily life. (So did George Elliot, but she was a bit strident about it.) Sigrid Undset sent me secret messages. And Sue Grafton, whose work mine in no way resembles, needs mention simply because I have most of her books and there must be a reason for that.

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
“If I had time,” I might take up astrology. As a hobby. I feel I would do almost anything to increase my understanding of my fellow humans and why they are the way they are. I know the natal signs of all the literary characters I’ve invented, though I never start out by knowing. But anyway, I already am not quite honest, here, because I do have time, plenty of it, and a pile of astrology books I’m not reading, and this hasn’t led to me picking up astrology as a hobby. My God, the work involved! That’s the case with any other hobby, too. I’m just too lazy. You can’t teach an old dog bla bla. I’m 84 years old, shouldn’t I be resting now? Except for finishing my current novel and writing 2 or 3 more. But writing is not a hobby.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?
I like to draw comics and cartoons, most often fat grumpy animals. My tween niece is very into drawing realistic animals, and when we draw together, she tsks at me for drawing, like, elephants in polka-dot dresses while she is trying to capture how a wolf truly looks and moves. While I am determined to anthropomorphize my creatures, she is intent on showing their wildness. This brings a creative tension to our artistic collaboration, naturally, but my niece is hopeful that with more practice and scolding I'll adopt the correct techniques.

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received?
I was six when I wrote my first (and to this date, only) novel. It was called "The Adventures of Peter and Bubblegum Rabbit" and was based on an ongoing imaginary game I played with my twin sister. In the game, she was Peter, I was Bubblegum, and we were orphaned rabbits who went on various adventures. Eventually, we were adopted by our one-time nemesis, Mr. Mosquito.

Now, some might call my story derivative of "Oliver!" and "Annie," two musicals my sister and I watched constantly on VHS. But I prefer to think of it as homage, or perhaps as an updated critical retelling steeped in the theory that animals, too, are persons, both metaphysically and morally.

Or not. At any rate, I do like the name "Bubblegum Rabbit." I wrote the story in a black-and-white marbled composition book in brightly colored markers. As my sister and I played out "chapters" in our imaginary game, I'd update the written version.

I think I showed the book to my parents and to our babysitter, Jessie, who sometimes played the game with us. I remember nothing of their reaction, but I assume it was positive, as I'm still writing!

What is your biggest creative doubt?
That none of it will matter. I'd like to believe in an afterlife, but I don't. To me, it seems like the next best thing is to have your creative work survive you. I try to remember how much poetry moved me when I was a teenager and in my twenties, but the older I get, the harder it is to remember how life-changing poetry could feel. When I was teaching undergrads, that helped, as I could see their hunger and passion for poetry, how it still held that delightful power.

Whose work do you feel most resembles your own?
This is such a good question. I have no idea, but I know that I've been really, really influenced by children's books. I write a lot about childhood, and for me, two authors who really capture that interior life are Beverly Cleary of the Ramona books and Jacqueline Wilson, a British author whose work I was introduced to when I worked in children's book publishing many years ago. They write like kids think. They capture their vulnerability in a way that really touches me. I don't think my poems and essays resemble their middle-grade novels, but I do think that I share with them a fundamental interest in the felt experience of childhood.

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
I think that puppetry would be really fun. My dad has this puppet that my mom got made for him when my sister and I were babies, and it's this marionette that looks like him, holding a twin in each arm. The puppeteer, whoever they were, must have been working from a photograph, as the details are minute in their accuracy, from the puppet's little wire glasses to its 80s' style dad jeans. Sometimes my dad would take the marionette out and dance it around for us. Mostly, though, for years on end, it swung inside my parents' big wardrobe, alone in the cedar-scented dark. Well, I didn't mean to make this creepy (yes I did) but I think that miniatures and dolls are so ripe for the imagination. It'd be cool to know how to make actual three-dimensional versions of these little almost-lives.

What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
"The poem starts HERE," accompanied by a dramatic flourish as the advice-giver points to a certain word, line, or stanza in a poem. And, yes, sometimes months or even years after I write a poem, I'll return to it, and while revising, I'll chop a lot of it away and find a new place to begin. But I have found that I always, always have to come to that decision on my own. There's no way to rush it.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?
When it comes to creativity, I tend to have a very simple philosophy: try anything and everything I can get my hands on. Really. I love it all!

However, as far as more regular practices go, I also play piano and guitar, sing (poorly), dance (as if no one were watching, because I make sure no one is), draw (like a happy kindergartner), and make pottery.

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received?
One of the first pieces I remember producing was a short story called “The Ghost of Weborg Campground” about an old graveyard near a campground my family frequented. I was six or seven and had just learned the word “spooky” – this becomes very clear throughout the piece.

It was very well-received by both the monster under the bed and my cats, who praised it as “meow.”

What is the single best sentence you've ever read?
My gut instinct here is to say “Jesus wept” to see if I can get a giggle, but after more careful and secular consideration, there’s one quote that never ceases to give me goosebumps:

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” -F. Scott Fitzgerald

What is your most evocative memory?
I’m very sensitive to scents, and remember reading once that scents connect directly to our limbic (and memory) system.

Last year, a good friend and I returned to Florence, Italy, where we had first met. We rented a small AirBnB on the same street where we had first lived, and the moment I turned on the faucet to pour myself a glass of water, the scent of the water brought back a wave of memory and emotion: the first day I arrived in Florence and the sweet, unfolding freedom of knowing that my entire life was about to change.

What is your biggest creative doubt?
How to get myself to show up.

I have no shortage of ideas – half-finished poems, half-started stories, a (nearly) finished novel, and outlines for a dozen more. But I have yet to discover the true panacea of the professional writer: a routine that ensures I consistently bring them to life. Something always seems to get in the way – a new responsibility, a wave of work, a half-baked excuse.

But I’m determined to find a way to get myself to show up every day for my writing, even if I have no idea what that will look like yet.

What change would you like to see in the publishing world?
I’d love to see the birth of a platform that allows writers to upload their work to a single place and editors to read and offer publication to the pieces that most speak to them.

I imagine it would be like an enormous cloud where writers could upload and tag their work (based on theme/s, the type of journal they hope to see it published in, etc.), and editors would be able to access this. Perhaps there would also be a sort of “random poem generator” where editors could simply click a button to read random pieces and selecting which ones most speak to them.

I think this one-stop-submission-shop would be an incredible way to help creatives save time when it comes to submitting their work and make things easier for editors. It would also allow more people to be discovered.

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
All of them. (Kidding). In reality, there are a few hobbies I’m hoping to take up soon even with limited time: photography, drawing, and surfing.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?
My main art form is writing, but I also love to cook. I love the feeling of rummaging in the fridge, finding disparate ingredients that can come together beautifully, and I love watching people eat something I’ve created. I have an extensive spice cupboard, and borrow my grandmothers’ and mother’s and aunts’ wisdom when it comes to using them.

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received?
I think I was about 10, and I wrote in Malay - the medium of instruction in Malaysia where I grew up. I remember learning of the rich tradition of literature and poetry in Malay, and of feeling a spark go off about how I might express myself.

What is the single best sentence you've ever read?
“And it is you are whatever a moon has always meant” by ee Cummings in his poem I Carry Your Heart (I Carry it In My Heart)

I absolutely love this poem, and think about it often. I feel that he has captured the very essence of what it means to love someone, to take them in to your sense of self. And I love the way he has made such an inexplicable thing - the moon - make complete sense in terms of human love.

What is your most evocative memory?
Most of my childhood memories seem to be in a kitchen. Food was such a glue in my family. I remember how there would be extensive planning about the food we would take with us for any outing. My grandmother, mother and aunts would be up early to make something “portable” to take with us. We were strictly vegetarian, and there was suspicion of “outside food”, which often meant taking our own. I never minded! It was uniformly delicious.

What is your biggest creative doubt?
Whether I can keep finding new subjects to write about! I have just finished a larger project and have had a longer-than-usual fallow period. I am slowly emerging from it, but there is always a slight concern that perhaps the words won't come back!

What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
“Write everyday”. I think I understand how this can be useful, especially when you are starting out and you need to build muscle memory, or learn how to get into the zone quickly. But it can also be a source of guilt if you haven’t written everyday. Often we need to do other things. Anne Lamott says in her book Bird by Bird something like, there’s no such thing as writer’s block, it just means you are empty of inspiration and need to fill up again. It would help us if we could expand the definition of writing to include things like being in nature, observing people, eavesdropping, other creative pursuits - etc.

What change would you like to see in the publishing world?
I would love to see more diversity in the big publishing houses. I haven’t written a novel-length piece, but I read widely and find that the material that comes from the bigger houses are all of a certain ilk. I think the argument is that they choose things that they know will appeal to a wide readership, but I think that underestimates the reading public.

What is the most unbelievable thing that has ever happened to you?
I marvel everyday that I can sit in my home in Naarm/Melbourne and think up some words based on my own particular experiences, then I can send it out into the world and people will actually read it! I appreciate it so much when people let me know what they’ve liked or what they felt could be done differently. It has been such. Source of joy and connection to me, this wonderful writing community.

Whose work do you feel most resembles your own?
Oh boy! I don’t think I can really answer this! I love many writers’ styles, and wish I could write like them, but ultimately the work never reads as authentic unless you write it in your own voice. I think it is important to spend time getting to know what your voice might be, and to do that it helps to read widely and try new styles. Twitter is fantastic for that. As is National Flash Fiction Day UK - Flash Flood. There is always such a variety of stories and styles there.

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
I would love to learn to play a musical instrument. I learned piano for a short time as a child, but unfortunately didn’t have a good experience with the teacher, so I gave it up. I would love to be able to start again, either the piano or something else, as an adult.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?
Just writing! When I was young I enjoyed other creative hobbies, but its hard to squish in one hobby around a day job, life, the universe and all the things!

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received?
I have memories of writing since I first managed to shape words with pencil on a page. My first memory of a long story was gluing those old sheets of computer paper with those perforated holed sections down the side together as I added new scenes to the story to create this long scroll.

What is your biggest creative doubt?
Gosh, doubt is a constant companion, taking up a different amount of space and a different flavour each day. The biggest doubt is: just because a few people like a few of my pieces, does not mean this hobby is going anywhere to justify the time I spend on it.

What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
I am lucky enough to say all the advice I have received has been useful to me! It is such a learning curve. I believe in being a lifelong learner and I believe in constantly challenging myself. If I try a new process or idea and it is not right for me, it is still useful because I gave it a red hot go AND I learned something more about myself (ie what isn't right for me). No advice has ever led me down a wrong road!

What change would you like to see in the publishing world?
I am pleased to say I think it IS happening (albeit slowly). I love/would love to see more diversity in characters, worlds and stories so more readers can see themselves and their family and culture in work and all our worlds can be enriched. I'd like to see increased diversity in published authors, in the voices and lived experiences of authors, with pathways to publishing for people whose voices have not been heard in previous generations, such as First Nations people, people living with a disability and people who's life experiences has meant their creative hearts have been put on the back burner.

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
Definitely something creative. I loved drawing, painting and claywork as a young person, the stories we can tell through different mediums. I often day-dream about having enough time to sketch or paint!

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?
I write song lyrics and melodies, but since I can't read or write music, they just sort of sit there on my hard drive. I recently took a landscape painting class. Since then, I've painted exactly one acrylic painting that I can say I like--and it wasn't a landscape.

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received?
When I was in third grade, I was gifted a white rabbit. He chewed his way out of his cage one night, and all of my older sisters' friends went out and searched for him on our 5 acres of property. They found him! Afterward, I wrote a series of short stories about Easter the Bunny and his adventures. My mom and my teacher told me how fun and good they were. My grandmother told me to choose something besides writing because only bestsellers make any money at it. She was quite the pragmatist.

What is the single best sentence you've ever read?
At first, I read this question as, "What is the most meaningful quote you've read?" But then I reread the question, and this amazing sentence from John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany popped right into my head: "When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time—the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers."

What is your most evocative memory?
The night my son died. He was 11. I remember every sight, sound, smell, feeling. Sometimes a particular part of that memory comes at me out of nowhere, and I have to go somewhere to catch my breath. Sometimes it takes days.

What is your biggest creative doubt?
That I'll never write anything that really matters. And yet, I can't define what that actually means. A moment of profundity for one person? A dozen? An award? A reprint in a textbook? Who knows!

What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
"Don't edit while you write." While there's value in getting the whole thing down on paper and then going back to revise and edit, I look at a long piece of work that needs revision (my half-revised novel, for example) and get totally overwhelmed. My neurodivergence simply does not function in that way. When I next write a long work, I'll write a chapter at a time and edit as I go.

What change would you like to see in the publishing world?
It's less about the publishing world than about how the regular world responds to creative endeavors. I want more people to value reading and creativity enough to pay publishers so publishers can pay artists and writers professional rates. And I know it's complicated. I've been in poverty more than I've been financially stable, and I know sometimes the world demands we pay for basic needs first. But wouldn't it be nice if everyone paid for at least one magazine subscription and bought a book a month?

What is the most unbelievable thing that has ever happened to you?
I died. When my youngest son, Zachary, was born, the placenta ruptured. He was without oxygen for 40+ minutes. I flatlined on the table from blood loss, and because of my rare blood type, they ran out of blood to give me. They brought us both back. The most unbelievable part? Maybe it was that we freaked out and skipped calling an ambulance so I made it to the hospital faster than I would have if we'd called 911. Maybe it was that my mom was supposed to go back to her house six hours away the day before and "had a feeling" so we didn't have to call a babysitter for the other kids. Maybe it was that my husband was supposed to go to work that night but "felt something weird" and called in. Maybe it was that every single emergency and OB doctor in the county of rural Idaho got the call about the emergency and showed up to the hospital that night. Or maybe it's that I’m still alive, and Zachary isn't.

Whose work do you feel most resembles your own?
I'd like to say my work resembles the quirky story quality of Neil Gaiman and the quirky character quality of TJ Klune. Or the as-yet-unknown quality of the plumber down the street.

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
I'd travel everywhere I could find unique rocks, dig for gems, and visit AZA-accredited zoos and wildlife rescues where I'd take selfies with every single animal that would let me. Rocks and animals are sooooo much cooler than people!

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?
I paint, acrylics mostly—with much more enthusiasm than skill. I also write fantasy novels for fun. Not sure that’s art.

How old were you when you produced your first work? How was it received?
Eight years old. My third-grade teacher and my mother were very proud.

What is the single best sentence you've ever read?
What a hard question! There are so many! This answer is kind of a punt, but one sentence I love is this, from the opening of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Parlement of Foules, about art and love: “The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne,/Th’assay so hard, so sharp the conqueringe,/The dredful joye alwey that slit so yerne,/Al this mene I by love, that my felynge/Astonyeth with his wonderful werkynge/So sore y-wis, that whan I on him thinke,/Nat woot I wel wher that I flete or sinke.”

But there are countless others! I keep thinking of the many, many sentences I love in Wallace Stevens’s “The Idea of Order at Key West.” Or Robert Creeley (“You got a song, man, sing it”). Hopkins. Toni Morrison. Joyce. Donne. Jane Austen. Shakespeare. Emily Dickinson. Spenser. Woolf. Blake. China Mieville. George Herbert. Marilynne Robinson. Even (not my favorite poet) T.S. Eliot (“I have heard the mermaids singing. . .”). There are some great sentences in Hilary Mantel’s novels. The last sentence of The Great Gatsby!—and on and on. And on!—not to mention all those sentences I’ve encountered, in translation, from other languages. I can’t even consider those, because I think I’d have to read those languages to form a real opinion. This question nearly derailed my attempt to answer you guys, because I kept coming up with more and more sentences I love. The world is a vast treasury of great sentences.

What is your most evocative memory?
A nightmare I had when I was around three years old. I keep trying to write about it, and keep failing.

What is your biggest creative doubt?
Easy one! The fear that I don’t know what I’m doing. I probably don’t. I just have to ignore that feeling and keep on writing. This was especially crippling when I was a young English professor completely immersed in some of the greatest poetry ever written, making me wonder why I bothered. But it’s not a race or a contest.

What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
To “write about what you know.” Taken the right way, this is good advice. But I want to push the envelope, so I want to go beyond the boundaries of what I know into stuff I just intuit, or only know a little, or may not know at all but want to know. As a reader, I understand that what I don’t know about a piece of writing may be the very way into that piece in a deeper way. I want to cherish my doubts and areas of ignorance, so they won’t frighten me and I can move beyond them. They are the ways I learn.

What change would you like to see in the publishing world?
The old gatekeeper system did writers no favors, but neither does the unmoored, wild and wooly publishing scene we have today. Some kind of sane system would be great. I have my doubts that AI is going to allow that. Already, copyright law is pretty toothless.

What is the most unbelievable thing that has ever happened to you?
Having my two children and falling in insta-love, like the shampoo commercial where two people run bouncing toward each other in slo-mo, arms outstretched.

Whose work do you feel most resembles your own?
Absolutely no idea. I am lucky enough to have two wonderful poetry mentors, and my style/approach is like neither one. Both seem to think, hmm, what does she want to accomplish? And how can I help her do it better? I THINK, if I consider Gregory Orr’s four poetic modes, that I gravitate more to singing and imagining than saying and naming. I know I tilt more toward the lyric than the narrative side of the continuum Orr describes. I THINK, if I consider the three modes of poetry Tony Hoagland discusses in Real Sofistikashun, I might tend more toward diction rather than imagery and rhetoric. These are just rough guesses. I know my poem you guys are publishing in the Old Friends issue, for example, is lyric—AND has lots of imagery AND has a definite narrative through-line.

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
Fencing. But I’d have to change physically, not just temporally.

Many artists and authors are creative in multiple disciplines. What other types of art do you create?
I'm a writer and a visual artist and have been a member of a cooperative art gallery for twenty-two years.

I began publishing fiction about two years ago. Before that I was primarily an interdisciplinary artist. I have a degree in Interrelated Media from Mass. College of Art. In the 1980s, I did a lot of performance and experimental work. I wrote monologues for performances, combined images with text, and in the past few years have focused on photography and collage.

Most of my recent collages originate with a story. Some play with characters like Ophelia, Inanna, or Mary Magdalene. In my series "Little Lu," I create work in the style of my fictional character, Lucie Darcy.

What is the best single sentence you've ever read?
The first line of William Gibson's Neuromancer: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." Forty years later, the line is still interesting because it now references the past as much as the future. How many of us remember the ghostly static of dead television channels in the middle of the night?

Also, when I think about sentences, I think about Virginia Woolf. In The Waves she uses a repeating image of the ocean as a chained beast stamping. "The waves fell; withdrew and fell again, like the thud of a great beast stamping."

How old were you when you produced your first artwork? How was it received?
During my most creative time as a child, I invented stories, and made weird little dolls to act them out. I believe that kind of inventive play in childhood is the beginning of writing, of art making. I didn't see it as art, of course. I saw it as play. When I was ten, I wrote my first poem. It was about a heroic squirrel named Pepe, and reading it out loud in front of my fifth grade class was awkward. And it was very different from the wild narratives of my weird little dolls. This question about a first artwork makes me wonder: when do we start differentiating between play and art? And is the division fair to us? As adult artists we often have to work hard to reclaim our sense of play.

What is your most evocative memory?
Beyond the back yard in the house where I grew up was an abandoned apple orchard. And inside the orchard was an abandoned foundation—just the concrete base of a house. Perhaps the house was planned but never built. Milkweed and wild carrots surrounded it, along with gnarled trees and tangles of concord grape vines gone wild. One day I found a black widow spider on a milk weed pod.

I played in the orchard by myself, bringing my dolls, creating characters, wearing my make-shift cape. In that world, magic lived in the square of the foundation, while the outside was a boundary holding the magic. I think it taught me something about art and stories.

What is your biggest creative doubt?
Sometimes I doubt that I can finish my stories. There's imposter syndrome, and then there's something I jokingly call klutz syndrome — the belief that everything I've done well happened by accident. And it can't be repeated. For instance, say I stumbled into writing a decent story, and even won a prize for that decent story. How will I ever repeat those exact stumbling steps of my process? (The answer is to just keep stumbling forward.)

What piece of creative advice have you received that sounded good, but was ultimately not useful to you?
"Write what you know." Better advice would be: write the world that you can build.

What is the most unbelievable thing that has ever happened to you?
Honestly, my life has been full of unbelievable things. I've birthed and raised a child, held each of my parents' hands as they passed, and survived a near-death experience. My feeling about what is miraculous -- or unbelievable -- has changed over the years. Sometimes the mundane things are miraculous and sometimes the unbelievable thing is just every day magic. But here's one story.

In 1978, I hitchhiked from London to Dublin, without considering either the Irish Sea or the British Army. A kind trucker gave me a ride and some Nestles crunch bars, and after we drove onto the ferry (which was going to Belfast, not Dublin), I stowed away in the cab under a pile of blankets. British soldiers found me, and the trucker told them I was only an American teenager. They just winked and let me go. Soon, I found myself in Belfast, hitchhiking in a war zone, machine guns trained on me as truckloads of soldier drove by. Finally, when I arrived in Dublin, I found a room with a group of Irish feminists, some of whom had fathers in the IRA. And then, with only twenty dollars in my pocket, I got a job at McDonalds. I'm told my American accent got me the job. One of my Irish friends later said, "Fools walk in, but you hitchhiked."

Whose work do you feel most resembles your own?
I don't know whose work resembles my own, but I know whose work I admire. The first is Charles de Lint. He writes urban fantasy the way I want to write urban fantasy, in the original sense of the genre—the wildness of Faerie meets the solidity of the city. Also, he writes with humor, empathy, and enormous imagination. I also think of Virginia Woolf, her beautiful sentences, and Orlando. Nina Kiriki Hoffman, because she's able to ground her fantastical stories with craft and sensory details. And finally, Alice Hoffman (no relation to Nina), particularly her use of stellar use of setting and history.

If you had unlimited time, what new hobby would you take up?
I would love to learn about birding. I stream the Cornell and Audubon bird cams, but maybe it's time to get binoculars and a great hat.