What do you want people to take away from your work?
My only hope is that I want someone to feel like they experienced a connection to a narrative that was not their own, as if the artwork itself was telling them a story about the imagery. From then, they find themselves drawn into it, wondering what led up to this visually captured moment and what happens after? Eventually, they combine their thoughts, perspective, and individuality into the visual details that reveal their interpretation of the artwork and its original story.

This concept of narrative is the focus of my artworks and the individual interpretation of the story is key to how I tell infinitely many narratives through a single image.

Do you have a creative routine - a ritual that helps get you in the creative zone?
When I get into the creative zone, often this feeling is inspired by other artistic media like a show, music, or reading. Anything can provoke a new idea, whether it be hearing a particular inflection in a song, seeing interesting colors in a scene, or reading the mood of a chapter. This gets my imagination thinking about visuals and how that imagery creates an original story, eventually leading me to something interesting I want to tell visually in an artwork.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
I remember the painting that changed my perspective on just how much storytelling I can do in a single image. Although I unfortunately don’t remember the artists name or the title of the work, the imagery was unforgettable.

It was very early on in my artistic career where my art teacher presented the class with a painting. It was a landscape of a farmhouse and the surrounding environment. The midground was gloriously lit in the golden light of sunset, but with a dark horrifying purple storm that consumed the sky and brought a looming heavy shadow to the background. She asked what the painting represented and while it could be described as just a simple landscape painting, I thought it was representative of how the present moment within the painting was in good times, but an overwhelming terrible event was imminent.

That painting was what got me thinking about how imagery can imply a narrative and how I could utilize visual details to bring storytelling qualities without making it specifically obvious. Eventually this concept became the focus of my artworks and defined the direction of my artistic career.

What surprising reactions have you gotten to your work?
I think most of the surprising reactions come from me when I chat with someone about my artwork. I’ll ask them what they think a particular artwork represents and sometimes it is very different to how I see it. It is so interesting to me to hear how much the imagery undertakes distinct interpretations when seen through someone else’s perspective. People live their own complex lives and see the same things differently, putting aspects of their own life into the narrative as they describe the details of the artwork. Those stories are invaluable to my artworks as they allow it to tell infinitely more narratives beyond my own.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
On average, it takes about a few months to bring an artwork from start to finish. However, that timespan is mostly due to the fact that I work on several pieces at a time, hopping between them as part of my creative process. Oftentimes when working on an artwork, there will be moments during development where I need to step back and evaluate how the artwork is coming along. During then, I’ll go to a different piece and work on it while I make decisions about the other artwork. Sometimes that decision making process can take awhile, while other times it might not happen at all if the creation process is going smoothly. With all that in mind, an artwork can be as quickly completed as a week if there are no delays or on the other hand, can take years as new ideas occasionally take priority so they don’t get forgotten.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
Pursuing creativity in my life and being an artist professionally I have found to have one significant tradeoff; there isn’t “off” time. Specifically, there is never a time where I am completely free from the obligations of being an artist. It’s both a blessing and a curse, where I can find inspiration anywhere when I am away from my supplies or be thinking about the direction I want to take an unfinished artwork, it also means there isn’t anything stopping me from overworking to the point of burnout. It isn’t like a nine to five office job, where I can clock out and not have to think about work until the next morning. For an artist, work is constant, but despite all that, I love what I do and nothing is more fulfilling to me than creating artworks that allow me to share original narratives with others.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
I have had to make tradeoffs a number of times. I live in a developing country with a lot of challenges, including epileptic power supply. Specifically in my area, there may not be electricity for days or weeks. Most times, I choose writing over sleeping when electricity is restored in the middle of the night. Besides, I must go to work the following morning. Recently, I also made a difficult decision to quit some paying private lessons just so I could have time for my studies and writing.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
I would say Ola Rotimi – late Nigerian playwright and dramatist. I read many recommended literary works in secondary school, but I found his The Gods are not to Blame to be most interesting and inspiring. The play, which is an adaptation of Sophocles' classic play Oedipus Rex, incorporates Yoruba settings and characters I can easily relate with. I began to source for more of his works – Our Husband has Gone Mad Again, Holding Talks are fraught with humor and mostly ignored social themes. Through him, I have learnt that the immediate environment is as important for creativity as the remote environment. So, for me, unlimited creativity involves blending internal influences with the external in an objective, ingenious manner.

Who do you think is the most misunderstood historical figure?
Judging it from my Yoruba cultural base, that would be Bashorun Gaa – the powerful Prime Minister of Oyo Ile who reigned in the eighteenth century. I believe history has been unkind to him. He is portrayed as a wicked, oppressive minister who wielded his power to enthrone and depose four Alaafin (king) of Oyo at will. I believe historians and writers need to do more by probing into the reign of Gaa and reevaluate the circumstances that produced him and made him behave the way he did at the time. My recently published poem of the same title in Havik is an attempt to call attention to a more critical study of that historical era.

What word do you feel should be brought back into popular usage
Maid – meaning an unmarried woman or a virgin. The seemingly negative connotation of the word is now commonly used.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
That trauma has a lifespan – long or short. And that duration needs figuring out by the victim alone. Trauma from ableism or any other form of discrimination is just a flimsy alibi to surrender to failure. It encourages people to be bullish like a 'prayer warrior' – to use this Nigerian-speak – in the face of discrimination. A misnomer can surprisingly morph into an aptronym with the gamut of name-calling translating into fame for the victimized person. The victimizer then turns into a pupil groomed in the liberal school of the formerly victimized. In all, there is a soothing bent woven into the core of my work to offer a convivial reading to the disenfranchised person.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece
Sincerely, I can’t tell how long. At times, I get literally stranded and start groping on pages of paper for a very long time, and the piece ends up not coming out as initially imagined. But I usually retain the subject.

Do you have a creative routine – a ritual that helps you get you in the creative zone?
No. I write whenever I have the time or feel like writing in my pastime. Perhaps because of the tedious nature of my work and the challenges of underdevelopment in my country, it is hardly feasible to take writing as the major source of income.

What is the last book you didn’t finish reading, and why did you put it down?
Not a literary work though. It was Collective Trauma and the Armenian Genocide: Armenian, Turkish and Azerbaijani Relations since 1839 by Pamela Steiner. The e-book was sent to me by the author herself. I wanted to use it as an item of my doctorate dissertation, but I had an issue which got me suspended between the red tape and inapprehension. I had to abandon the book – and all.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition
Nigerian playwright Ola Rotimi. Even in death, he deserves to be celebrated for his contribution to literature in Africa and beyond.

What surprising reactions have you gotten to your work?
I will recount two. First, early this year, I sent a hybrid work on rape to a journal, then I received a message from the editor asking if I was safe and if I needed any help urgently. Receiving the message, I chortled with much gratification. I was impressed realizing how writing can excite humanity in people. Second, I recently submitted a haiku to a literary magazine. The editor, in his response, gave a lengthy depiction of the piece. It was a different but out-of-universe interpretation.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
I'm not a film buff; so, I may not have any particular one in mind.

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.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
Yes, absolutely. For years I worked in a demanding hybrid management-creative job in which everything I did belonged to the company. Although I liked it and was grateful to be able to make a living, I had very little intellectual energy left at the end of the day and longed to be able to expand into some of the interests that drove me. Recently I was extremely fortunate to be able to move into a freelance consulting role where I intentionally accept a reduced income in exchange for the opportunity to do a little more of my personal work.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
The earliest that comes to mind is Samuel Pepys. When I was a young kid, my grandmother—the dominant member of our family—made me listen nightly to her reading from books that she thought were important. Sometime between eight and eleven years old (I’ve forgotten the exact age), I had to listen to her reading Pepys’s entire massive diary, except the graphically sexual passages. In that, I saw a deep, one-sided, and often troubling view of seventeenth-century London—the politics, gender relations, class hierarchies, plagues, the Great Fire, and the everyday life of a seventeenth-century privileged English household.

Who do you think is the most misunderstood historical figure?
No idea. I typically can’t relate well to “most” or “favorite.”

What do you want people to take away from your work?
I think many of my poems function very differently from one another. I’m sure we usually overvalue the imagined power of our own words, but I like to dream that some readers will get the various types of spiritual longing, silly playfulness, outrage, philosophical insight, or musicality that I feel when writing. Lacking that, maybe at least a sense of community with the many who aren’t quite members of any community.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
With most of my planned essays (except my few philosophical publications), the gap has never been closed. They’re still languishing in embryonic stages. With poetry, I rarely pre-imagine the work. Typically, I carry around in my head a set of phrases, and someday while I’m waking up or riding on a bus, a poem coalesces around one of them, essentially fully formed, and I try to get it onto paper or into my computer before it vanishes. Then I spend a few days tweaking some bits of it. That’s how the one that is forthcoming in NonBinary Review came about. At the other extreme, I’m still agonizing over some poems I wrote as a teenager, and I doubt that they’ll ever be finished. I also recently spent more than two hundred hours creating a poem that is (intentionally) nearly nonsense.

Do you have a creative routine - a ritual that helps get you in the creative zone?
No. The creative zone is almost always there. The challenge is in keeping it in check so that I’ll attend to other demands. I don’t aspire to “be a writer,” and I don’t have a proper concept of writer’s block. In my writing for employers and clients, the work simply has to be done—on time and polished and without exception. In my personal writing, I’m almost always driven by something that I think needs to be written (some of which I won’t try to impose on the rest of the world). If that compulsion is ever missing, I won’t write.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
Here are four films that I think may have influenced my writing: Perfumed Nightmare (Mababangong Bangungot) by Kidlat Tahimik; Providence and Hiroshima Mon Amour, both by Alain Resnais; and Pasqualino Settebellezze by Lina Wertmüller.

Who was the first author or artist to broaden your worldview?
I grew up in Eastern Europe during the 1980s because my parents were based over there. I did not have an expansive library available to me. I remember that one of the first books I purchased with my own money was the novelized sequel to First Blood by David Morell. This was on a trip that we took to Vienna which was the closest location where I could acquire English language books. When I read it I remembered thinking that I had never experienced anything like it before. This sentiment applied as much to the way that the author wrote as much as to the content of the book. I have gone back to those opening pages many times throughout the years and re-remembered feeling like I was stepping into a larger world when I read that book the first time.

What word do you feel should be brought back into popular usage?
I like the word “adumbrate.” I encountered this word when I was reading a Biblical commentary which is now out of print. The word means to “give a vague foreshadowing” or “to outline.” The line from the commentary was something like, “What human qualities are adumbrated by the fruit of the spirit.”

Do you have a creative routine - a ritual that helps get you in the creative zone?
I try to start every day with personal journaling, both handwritten and typed. I definitely feel like this provides some writing fuel for the rest of the day. In the past months I have also been trying to free-write for 5 to 10 minutes each day. For me this is a brand-new experience and I find it very exhilarating. When I have a piece in mind I generally try to get it on paper as quickly as possible without spending too much time editing it in the moment (this is, of course, harder said than done). And then, once it is “on paper” I like to edit my way through it three to four times. I also have a writer’s group I attend where we critique each other’s work. This has been tremendous valuable for my writing experience.

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down?
I tried to get into Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, but I kept feeling like the book was resisting me. I know that it is a classic and perhaps someday I’ll be able to get into it, but there was something about the vibe in which is was written that made it difficult for me to grasp.

Name a book/author/artist that you feel deserves more recognition.
I grew up with my mother reading the Patricia St. John books to me. She wrote many children’s books that deal with a surprising variety of issues that I think resonate with people of all ages and different cultures. Whenever I mention her in group settings I always have at least one person who has also read her and greatly appreciated her talent and sensitivity.

Name a favorite film or other visual work that has influenced the way you shape a story.
I am a great admirer of the late Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski’s late 80s television series The Dekalog. The series consists of ten hour-long parts which aired on Polish television. The director used different cinematographers for each segment, and this allows each piece to feel unique. The series interprets a variety of social situations as they play out in Polish society through the moral and ethical lens of the Biblical Ten Commandments. I am a huge admirer of Kieślowski and of his ability to play with narrative and theme. I am far from his level of talent, but I have used his works before as a creative jumping-off point for some of my writing.

Have you had to make tradeoffs in order to have time for creativity in your life?
It has been very difficult to dedicate time to writing in my adult life, but I hope that in embarking on my MFA I will be able to carve out a significant amount of time for writing and workshopping that I have not had in the past. I wish I could write poetry and fiction all day every day—don’t we all!—but unfortunately at this point in my life that is not a possibility. I work hard to construct that possibility, so in my downtime, I observe. I find things in my everyday life that inspire my poems: poems, musings, idioms, experiences, problems, memories, interesting words. I stick them in my notes app and hope they don’t get lost before I become inspired again!

What word do you feel should be brought back into popular usage?
Harlot. If someone called me a harlot I’d probably be more excited than they probably think I should be.

What do you want people to take away from your work?
I want people to recognize themselves in my experiences. This isn’t even a literal hope either, because though I have so many experiences like growing up queer and understanding my autism that I feel like may people could resonate with, I hope that my work evokes a sort of nostalgia for experiences in someone’s own life. When I write a poem evoking imagery of a cold bed and a breeze in the middle of the night, I want people to find themselves in their own bed, in their own memory, as they themselves have lived it. I write in statements and feelings, and I want that writing to be conducive to a whole sensory experience for my readers.

How long does it take you to close the gap between the work as you imagine it and the real, finished piece?
I believe that poetry moves through me. Some days I don’t actually feel like a writer at all, just a conduit for words and ideas. This can mean a few things for my work: sometimes, it means that my poetry comes out onto the page without the need for much editing at all, while other times my work needs extensive editing to form some semblance of a finished work. For example, my poem which was featured in NonBinary Review “To be a chameleon helped out of its egg by God” underwent edits over two whole weeks, and I moved around the stanzas about sixty times before I decided on an order that felt right. I added stanzas, cut stanzas out, moved lines from one section to another—I can’t imagine what the poem would be if I had submitted it immediately upon writing it! (Probably five pages long instead of three.) On the flip side, I have several poems that I didn’t want to change once they were down on paper—one example is my poem “I dreamt my parents were together but still I was the one yelling” featured in Kissing Dynamite Poetry Issue #41. So to bridge that “gap” between the imagined product and the real one, it can be anywhere from ten minutes to two weeks.

Do you have a creative routine - a ritual that helps get you in the creative zone?
Showers are huge for me. I’m working on an adult sci-fi/fantasy novel, so I run through scenes and ideas while I wash up, but I also consider my poetry as well. I think about words and sentence structure and enjambment—you know, average shower things. (What do you mean, you don’t think about stanza length in the shower? What the hell do you do?)

If I am in the stage where I am editing a poem that’s already been brought into existence halfway, I take what I call “constructive breaks.” This usually requires me to do another task that seems mindless like playing video games or watching Selling Sunset or taking a walk, ut this task will always leave my mind vacant enough to consider my writing subconsciously. I can sound out lines while I play Breath of the Wild, or take a drive along the river near my house and have an epiphany about structure. It gets my brain thinking about something else, but not necessarily occupied.

What's the last book you didn't finish reading, and why did you put it down?
Oh gosh, I have two answers for this, reflecting two genres. For poetry, it would probably be Amanda Gorman’s Call Us What We Carry. This might ruffle some feathers because I have plenty of friends who adored this collection, and for good reason! She’s so accomplished already at such a young age, and I love a lot of her work. I think my expectations for this collection were just so high that when I finally cracked it open, I was a little disappointed. There were some poems I loved, but in the end I just couldn’t make it through.

In terms of fiction, I recently bought Gearbreakers by Zoe Hana Mikuta, and I was so convinced that I was going to love it because so many people I know loved it. I’m a writer of queer speculative fiction and poetry, so I am always looking for a new lesbian action read to add to my ever-growing repertoire. I was disappointed with the blandness of the characters and how sluggish the narrative was—I couldn’t get past chapter ten! I’m hoping one of my friends finds it to be a better fit for their bookshelf; it just wasn’t for me.