Tag: interview

Karla Hernandez Torrijos is a formerly undocumented writer and teaching artist. Beginning at an open mic in 2017, she has since read her work in venues across Nebraska, New Mexico, and California. An award-winning poet, Karla’s work interrogates our understanding of home, displacement, and the liminal space in between. She is currently at work on her second manuscript.

Her poem, Farmworker Dies Fleeing an Immigration Raid in Southern California, was a finalist for the 2026 Honeybee Poetry Prize and appears in Issue #24.

Tell us a bit about yourself.

Ironically enough, this was the hardest question for me to answer. In some ways, I like to think of myself as “the man behind the curtain” of a poem, the one pulling the levers of language to create an illusion. 

I am someone who grew up on the steps of the public library of a small Nebraska town, waiting for Laura to open the doors in the summers. I love tea with milk on the mornings when I don’t work, and whatever’s most caffeinated on the mornings when I do. I used to walk the mile home from middle school with a book held in front of me and the year I dropped out of high school, I only attended one class regularly— Language Arts. I love an em dash, I love an Oxford comma, and I still, still don’t know when to use a semicolon correctly. My favorite season is fall, though I often lie and say it’s spring, because I believe spring is the season of poets. I struggle to watch a movie without subtitles, a holdover from when my sister and I were learning English. I think the greatest genre of film is the romantic comedy, and that children make the best storytellers. And that fragments should be considered proper sentences. I talk a lot and I write even more and don’t always know when to stop. Finally, in the fourth grade, my teacher believed in my short story so much that she asked me to read it in front of the class. I never looked back.

What compelled you to write the poem?

I was undocumented from the ages of six to nineteen. The youngest, I was often protected from the harsher realities of immigration by my mother and sisters. While I did harbor some fear around my and my family’s safety, the 2000s and 2010s seemed like an entirely different world than the one we live in now— the rhetoric less vitriolic, the divisions between party lines less defined, and the general sentiment towards immigration, and immigrants themselves, less hateful. While this may simply be the world as seen through the eyes of a child, it seemed as if detentions and deportations were something that happened in other places, to other people. It is only now, within the safety afforded by my legal status, that I realize just how wrong I was, how close my family and I came to becoming another statistic, another headline.

I wrote this poem in July 2025, in the days following the news of Jaime Alanís’ death, caused by injuries he sustained during a fall, attempting to flee or hide from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents. Since this poem was written, I, alongside others, have watched as ICE has continued to rip apart families and communities. Most recently, footage from the fatal shootings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti went viral, with demonstrations and vigíls taking place across the country. While I am, of course, moved to see people mobilized to action (some for the first time), I have often asked myself to what extent legal status plays a role in people’s willingness to empathize. According to the National Immigration Project, thirty-three people died in ICE custody in 2025. As of September 1st of this year, at least twenty-six people have died in ICE custody or within days of their release from custody.

Geraldo Lunas Campos. Luis Gustavo Nuñez Caceres. Luis Beltrán Yañez-Cruz. Parady La. Victor Manuel Díaz. Heber Sánchez Domínguez. Lorth Sim. Jairo García-Hernández. Alberto Gutiérrez Reyes. Pejman Karshenas Najafabadi. Emmanuel Cleeford Damas. Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal. Royer Pérez Jiménez. José Guadalupe Ramos-Solano. Tuan Van Bui. Alejandro Cabrera Clemente. Aled Damien Carbonell-Betancourt. Denny Adán González. Mamuka Artmeladze. Felix Alcorta-Rodriguez. Adrian Andreas Florian. Jesus Manuel Arenas-Silva. Jose Chajon-Raxon. Priciliano Trejo. Edwin Lopez-Cornejo. Lianyong Wei. 

Perhaps, like me, your eyes moved quickly over the list of names. A list of names is just that, after all, a list. It is nearly impossible to find humanity in a wall of text. When I first read The New York Times article from which this poem takes its title, I was struck most by the indifferent tone of news reporting, the apparent detachment by which facts are presented. In writing this poem, I was forced to confront the limitations, and failure, of all language, including the poetic language I had long sought solace in. 

The poem’s form, a palindrome poem that breaks structure in its final line, was created by writer Nicole Sealey. In my opening line What is the right form / For laying down the dead man’s body? I contend with the central question of writing about Jaime Alanís at all, of trying to process my own pain without appropriating someone else’s grief. As a migrant writer, I have often felt complicit in the erasure of real people in favor of a gripping image or a moving story. A poem, despite whatever intention it begins with, can just as easily create caricatures of the very people it hopes to depict. This poem was my way of grappling with those feelings of complicitness, as well as an attempt to acknowledge the man at the heart of the headline. 

In many ways, all roads led me to that last line. Inspired by the work of Black activists, scholars, and the #SayHerName movement, I chose to end the poem with the simple fact of a name. Unlike a list, a single name forces us to sit in the uncomfortable and painful reality that many of us avoid: He was just like me or perhaps even more importantly, I was just like him. We can debate the sociopolitical and economic contexts surrounding a person’s death, the circumstances that lead to migration in the first place. We can disagree on immigration policy, about whether to build walls or extend pathways to citizenship. We cannot debate, or deny, one another’s humanity. 

Jaime, Mohammad, Tuan— they lived. They laughed, they sang, and in migrating, they dared to dream of a world bigger than the one they had inherited. And each, at one moment or another, was held in the arms of someone that loved them and wished for them a long and happy life. Just as you yourself were. The only difference is which side of the border you were born into. 

What unique or surprising detail can you tell us about the revision process, and/or the final version of it

I think perhaps the most surprising detail of the revision process is how little changed from the original draft to the final version! In reviewing my old journal, the first and final drafts of this poem look surprisingly similar— whereas the process of editing was more subtractive than additive, which is not usually the case for me. This was one of those rare cases where, once I knew the form I was writing in, the poem arrived nearly “itself”, so to speak. 

One small detail is that the original draft used Jaime Alanís’ full name. During the revision process, I decided to pare it down to just his first. This decision was born out of a desire for familiarity in the piece. A familiarity, that while unearned, allowed me to create a deeper sense of kinship and eventually, loss.

Do you write in other genres, and if so, what?

I do! I write creative nonfiction, using elements from both fiction and poetry to tell stories from my own life. I hid behind poetry for a long time because I feared the confines of memoir and the scope of fiction. I signed up for an introductory course on creative nonfiction in college, not really knowing what it was, and fell in love. 

I recently sent an essay to a journal for the first time and received the kindest, most encouraging rejection letter in return. It was a good reminder that I’m headed in the right direction, and to keep going, despite not always being the most confident in my prose.

What fuels your desire to write (or engage in other creative outlets)?

In considering this question, I began with Joan Didion, who once wrote, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” I must admit that I did not know the full quote until recently, in which she expands on the idea that writers impose “a narrative line upon disparate images” in their attempt to create order from the chaos of existence. Truth be told, I had always assumed she meant We tell ourselves stories in order to survive, that stories existed in much the same way the first stone blade must have— a tool in our ancestors’ hands that could change the course of an entire species. Through stories, we could recount our past, and in doing so, shape our future. 

I came to writing from a place of desperation, just as a lonely lifeboat arrives on the edges of shore. For a time, poetry became a refuge. In a moment of my life when I did not believe that the things I said mattered, writing became a way of exerting agency within the sentences of someone else’s narrative. I am not the first to say that writing, that all creativity, is an act of survival; that survival itself demands creativity. However, as I grew older, I began to see writing less as a life raft and more as a practice, perhaps the building of a home—intentional, methodical, labor intensive. 

One of the central pillars of this house I’ve built is my belief that writing must serve a greater purpose than aesthetic beauty, a sentiment best encapsulated by the James Baldwin quote, “The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.” 

All my writing is an attempt towards what Baldwin is describing. I am pointing out at the world, I am saying ‘Look at that barn swallow, look at that meadow, look at that child in the detention center’ and it is because I love you, and because I love you, I want you to see what I see. Not all

of it is pastoral and not all of it is painful but all of it is important. Palestinian writer Marwan Makhoul said in his now-famous poem, In order for me to write poetry that isn’t political / I must listen to the birds / and in order to hear the birds / the warplanes must be silent. 

You cannot write about the beauty of the meadow if it is engulfed in flames nor the barn swallow’s song if she is choking on smoke. I am not interested in writing as merely an act of witnessing, nor as a weapon by which the traumatized are re-traumatized in perpetuity. My desire to write is fueled by the foundational belief that we cannot face it if we cannot name it, or to say it in the words of Lucillle Clifton, “We cannot create what we can’t imagine.” 

Perhaps yesterday, writing was a lifeboat, today it is the house we are building, and tomorrow it is the front door that we must walk through to see what exists beyond these four walls. The work of writing is also the work of transfiguration. I am writing not simply to reflect, but also to reimagine. What worlds exist within our reach, at the edge of our pens? 

How do you make expression a part of your daily life, or how do you find a balance between your writing and other responsibilities?

Lately, I have been writing ten minute poems during my breaks at work. There is a kind of spark that ignites when you’re forced into such an inflexible constraint. I have found that this practice has made me a better writer, as the limitations of time demand that I move through the page swiftly and with confidence. I don’t have time to look up a word or to hand-wring over whether a particular image is working. Gone are the days of Walden Pond, a myth created in part due to the unpaid and unacknowledged labor of women. Nearly every writer I know has a day job that pulls them away from the page. 

The reality, somewhat laughable, is that I do not find a balance between writing and other responsibilities. Sometimes, the dishes lay heaped in the kitchen sink while I work on an essay. Other times, the poem lays unfinished as I get ready for that morning’s shift, muttering lines to myself. I remember reading once that famed poet and physician William Carlos Williams favored such short stanzas in part because he wrote poems in between patients at the hospital. Whether this is true or not is besides the point. The point, I suppose, is that all art is a give and take. On a more practical level, I carry a small notebook in my tote bag. I try to write as often as I can, which is still not nearly as often as I would like, and I let the dishes pile up more than I

care to admit. I ask myself what is non-negotiable and go from there. There are some responsibilities that cannot be shirked— morning shifts, doctor’s appointments. Still, in between these, there are brief windows of time. Now and again, I try to look through them.

What do you think when you hear, “the good life”?

Raised in Nebraska most of my life, I can’t help but think of our state sign when I hear those words. Nebraska… the good life in bold white letters against that specific shade of road-sign green. Home of Arbor Day. I am of the belief that a good life, the good life, is slow, intentional living. Like our sign, the good life is understated. It is not the highlights, although those are there too, but rather the daily work of building and keeping community. 

Another word for this might be family. It is your grandfather’s hands, time-worn as the recipe pages he turns, looking for a beef gravy that smells like a childhood home does. It is your best friend’s laughter, the kind that only emerges from relief, a sunray peeking through clouds, after an especially long year. It is the work of writing, often solitary, always deliberate, as you reach into an opaque river to try and find something glimmering. 

The good life is the small and miraculous occurrences that appear every day but are swept up by routine and responsibility. The perfectly brewed cup of coffee, the commute with only green lights, or the line in the poem that holds your gaze, the way only a reflection can.

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Thank you, Karla, for being generous with your time and your pen and for sharing so openly. The poetry of any age or time period is documentation of the state of the world and your answers and explanations are heartbreaking and also compelling.

We appreciate you being a part of our growing community, our TGLR family and we wish you the best with life and all your writing endeavors!

Mara Lee Grayson’s poetry has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Tampa Review, and Nimrod, among other literary journals, and has been nominated multiple times for the Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. An award-winning scholar of rhetorics of racism and antisemitism, Grayson is the author or editor of five books of nonfiction. She holds an MFA from The City College of New York and a PhD from Columbia University and was previously a tenured professor in the California State University system. Originally from Brooklyn, New York, she currently resides in New Jersey.

Her poem, How to Be a Jewish Woman in Amerikkka while Your Friends Sleep Fitfully in War Zones, was the winner of the 2026 Honeybee Poetry Prize and appears in Issue #24.

Tell us a bit about yourself, something more than just what’s in your bio. Perhaps something not a lot of people know. 

I acted before I wrote. (My father was a stage director, and I grew up surrounded by theatre.) In some ways, I came to writing through acting – I wanted to make moments come to life. Also, I have more piercings and tattoos than people expect me to have (which says a lot less about me than it does about people’s expectations).

As far as message and intention, the poem speaks for itself. What more can you tell us about what compelled or inspired you to write it? 

I actually began writing this poem in 2022, set it aside for a while, and came back to it in 2024, after hearing from friends and colleagues who had been running for shelter every night. I juxtaposed that with what I had been trying to make sense of a couple of years earlier.

What unique or surprising detail can you tell us about the revision process?

Believe it or not, this poem was originally a sonnet that I deconstructed about 20 different times.

What did you learn (about yourself, craft, or life in general) through writing and revising it?

As I returned to this poem, I wondered how much of my own experiences of identity and positionality reflect the experiences of my ancestors. What do we share across space and time? What is universal, so to speak, and what is particular? How do we draw connections without losing what makes us unique?

What do you hope readers take from the poem?

I never presume what readers will take from a poem. Over the years, readers and editors have shared with me interpretations of my work that I never intended, and I’ve come to not only be okay with that but to kind of appreciate it. I won’t say all interpretations are equally valid – they’re not – but we all bring ourselves to the work we read. If my work speaks to you, I’m glad, and I hope it makes you both feel and think about something just a little differently than you did before.

Do you write in other genres, and if so, what?

I do! My MFA thesis was a collection of short stories, a few I’ve since published. I wrote freelance briefly for a couple of newspapers, and I even once worked as a theatre and film critic. A lot of people know me primarily as a scholar.

What fuels your desire to write?

I want to say that I write to make meaning of the world and to feel like myself, and both are true, but, at root, it’s a feeling, a compulsion maybe. I feel driven to write. I don’t feel comfortable or satisfied when I don’t.

How do you balance writing with everyday life?

I have no idea what balance means, and I have yet to meet a writer or artist who does.

Are there any special projects, other pieces, or books you’d like to promote?

Readers can find my books here. 

What do you think when you hear, “the good life”?

Having time and space to do the things I want to do without feeling like I have to squeeze them in or compartmentalize them. Maybe the good life is really about finding that ever-elusive balance.

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Thank you, Mara, for sharing more about your life and writing with us. We are grateful to you for participating in this Q&A and for being a part of what is becoming a sweet history of Honeybee Prize winners!!

We wish you continued success with writing and that you will someday find that balance!

Ali McLafferty earned her PhD in History at UC Berkeley. Her work combines the historical with the fantastical and has appeared in The Forge, Fractured Lit, Flash Frog, Gone Lawn, and The Belmont Story Review and is forthcoming in Flame Tree Press’s Helen of Troy anthology. Her work has also been shortlisted for prizes, including Fractured Lit, The Manuscript Wishlist, and Unleash Press. She is also a visual artist whose work has been featured in Flash Frog, Centaur Magazine, and Foofaraw Press. More of her publications and artwork can be found on her website, alimclafferty.com.

Her short fiction, Salt and Sand, appears in Issue #24.

Tell us a bit about yourself, something more than just what’s in your bio. Perhaps something not a lot of people know. 

I’m an avid gardener. And when I say “avid,” I mean Texas Gardener avid: wake-up-at-5:30am-in-the-summer-to-water-everything-by-hand-for-an-hour-because-of-water-restrictions avid. My backyard is tiny, but I’ve packed every inch of it with plants. My current harvest includes lemons, oranges, figs, bananas, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, watermelons, honeyrock melons, pumpkins, onions, herbs, and even hops (yes—to make my own beer!). I have no idea how many plants I own at this point. Not enough. NEVER ENOUGH.

What was the inspiration behind “Salt and Sand”?

I was watching The Little Mermaid with my five-year-old daughter and–as I often do when watching Disney movies–entertaining myself by dissecting plot holes. How does Ariel instantly learn to walk? How does she know what things are food and what are not, how to breathe with lungs, or even how to lie in a bed? My own kids took months to figure those things out! The more I thought about it, the more bizarre being human seemed. I started wondering what life would really look like for a mermaid with no knowledge of the terrestrial world—and no voice—who chose to become human.

What unique or surprising detail can you tell us about the revision process and/or the final version of it?

I began the story with the intention of making Cordelia an actual mermaid. But as it progressed, I realized that I myself had no idea whether she was or not. I still don’t have an answer to that question. So I decided to lean into that ambiguity, even though that makes the ending potentially devastating, because that is how we experience every myth and legend: by balancing the fine line of truth versus fiction.

What did you learn (about yourself, craft, or life in general) through writing and revising it?

It was the first short story I ever wrote. I had no idea how to write them, and the attempt seemed daunting. But I realized that if I began with a general premise, emotional temperature, and characters who were clear in my mind, I didn’t have to have a strict notion of where it had to go. I could just enjoy letting it develop. That was a really wonderful experience, and how I go about writing all my short stories now.

What do you hope readers take from the piece?

That there is no clear, defining line between magic and reality. That the world is a place still full of mystery, and that resting in that space of ambiguity, wonder, and even discomfort can be rewarding.

At what point in your life did you begin writing and working on this story? 

I wrote it in June of 2025, six months after I lost my niece, who inexplicably died 6 hours after she was born. It was such a shocking, devastating occurrence that I spent months in a sort of daze trying to understand what had happened. We live in a world we feel should have answers, especially as our knowledge of science and technology progresses. And yet I kept thinking about the people of the past, who when they suffered the mysterious loss of a child chalked it up to witchcraft, or believed it had been stolen by fairies. So I began writing fiction that blended myth and reality in a way that felt true to my experience, and helped me process the grief.

Do you write in other genres, and if so, what?

My favorite genres are historical fiction and speculative fiction, and my favorite pieces to write are ones that blend the two together. I have a PhD in history, so I really love bringing to life historical time periods, settings, and beliefs. But I also love speculative fiction, so my pieces usually weave in subtle (and sometimes explicit) magical/fabulist/surreal elements.

What fuels your desire to write?

Wow…this is an interesting question, because I don’t really know the answer to it. I’ve always written—first academic, scholarly pieces and now fiction. I guess the most honest answer would be that a sort of compulsion fuels me–it just feels so GOOD to write, in the same way other people say it feels good to go on a run. I don’t understand running, because frankly I am pretty physically lazy. But I can appreciate the way people describe feeling both an intense joy and calm contentment, because that is what writing feels like to me. It’s also a blissful escape–an amazing way to just let time and worries and the outside world dissolve completely. Art and gardening give me the same feeling. If they made a candle that smelled of paint and dirt I would buy it.

What have been the biggest influences in your writing?

I have always been a voracious reader, and my favorite authors of all time are historical fiction writers: Maggie O’Farrell, Hilary Mantel, Geraldine Brooks, James Michener, Henry Wouk, and Isabel Allende. I love the way they bring the past to life, both with incredibly immersive descriptions of place but also by making the interior, emotional lives of their historical characters feel immediate. And Allende’s House of the Spirits revealed this whole new style of writing to me–historical magical realism.

How do you balance writing with everyday life?

I have a career, two kids, a dog, a cat, and an extremely demanding garden that take up a good deal of my time. But I also make sure to prioritize writing these days. This usually means waking up at the crack of dawn while everyone is asleep to hammer things out. I also tend to write piecemeal in time gaps: waiting in line at the grocery store, stirring a pot of dinner, walking the dog, sitting at the DMV….what would I do without iPhone Notes!!

Are there any special projects, other pieces, or books you’d like to promote?

Yes, thank you! My website, alimclafferty.com, has links to my published fiction, artwork, and upcoming projects. I’m also excited to have stories appearing in two forthcoming anthologies: Helen of Troy from Flame Tree Press this September and Missed Fits from Calendar of Fools in 2027.

What do you think when you hear, “the good life”?

I don’t necessarily think of a “joyful” life. I think a “meaningful” life. One that might have had grief, loss, and trauma but that ultimately finds richness and purpose.

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Thank you, Ali, for participating in this Q&A and for the direct and heartfelt answers. We are grateful to you for being a part of our growing literary community and wish you the best with writing, a bouuntiful harvest, and finding forgotten gems hidden among all the phone notes.

Etya Vaserman Krichmar https://www.etyawrites.com/ is a Kazakhstan-born writer who immigrated to the United States from the former Soviet Union. She writes literary nonfiction exploring identity, displacement, and belonging. Her work has appeared in Brevity Blog, Narratively, The Orlando Sentinel, Spillwords Press, MasticadoresUSA, White Rose, Write Launch, and international anthologies. She is currently seeking representation for her memoir “Citizens of Nowhere.”

Her short CNF, Love Flows Forward, appears in Issue #24.

Tell us a bit about yourself, something more than just what’s in your bio. Perhaps something not a lot of people know. 

I was born in Kazakhstan, raised in Ukraine, became a wife in Moldova, and came to the United States as a Jewish refugee from the former Soviet Union. Much of my writing explores memory, identity, and the invisible ways our past shapes the present.

One thing people may not know is that I didn’t begin writing seriously until later in life. A near-death experience changed the course of my life and compelled me to write. Before becoming a writer, I spent decades in the corporate world. I often say that I didn’t find writing—writing found me when I was finally ready to listen.

When I’m away from my desk, I paint with thread through needlepoint and enjoy creating elaborate cakes. I suppose storytelling isn’t the only way I like making something beautiful from scratch. Another little-known fact is that I’m a Reiki Master. That experience taught me to pay attention to silence, intuition, and the stories people carry beneath the surface.

Life is full of moments worthy of writing about. What inspired you to write Love Flows Forward? 

Sunflowers began with a childhood memory. Behind our housing development in the Soviet Union stretched endless sunflower fields. As a child, they became my refuge—the one place where I felt I belonged, and the only place where I could forget, for a little while, that I was different. Years later, that memory collided with another image: sunflowers blooming on land marked by suffering. I couldn’t stop wondering how beauty and tragedy could share the same soil.

As I wrote, I realized the essay wasn’t only about flowers. It became an exploration of memory, resilience, and the responsibility of remembering. Sometimes history returns quietly. Sometimes it blooms.

What unique or surprising detail can you tell us about the revision process?

The ending changed many times.

At first, I tried to explain everything I wanted readers to understand. Eventually I realized the essay became stronger when I trusted the image itself. The more I removed explanation, the more emotional space I gave the reader.

Revision, for me, is usually an exercise in subtraction rather than addition.

What did you learn through writing and revising it?

I learned that memory is never fixed.

Each time we revisit the past, we bring a different version of ourselves. The facts may remain the same, but our understanding evolves. As children, we experience events without fully grasping their meaning. As adults, we return with perspective, life experience, and, I hope, greater compassion for the people we once were.

As a writer, I also learned to trust restraint. My early drafts explained too much. Revision taught me that readers don’t need every answer. Sometimes what remains unsaid carries the greatest emotional weight.

What do you hope readers take from the piece?

I hope readers leave with a renewed appreciation for memory and for the ordinary people whose lives history often overlooks. We inherit more than family photographs and heirlooms. We inherit stories, and with them comes the responsibility to remember.

If the essay encourages even one reader to ask an older family member about their story—or to pause before allowing history to fade into silence—it has done its job.

At what point in your life did you begin writing nonfiction?

I began writing as a child in the Soviet Union. At first, writing was my escape. It gave me a place where I could imagine a different world and find a freedom that didn’t always exist in everyday life.

I returned to writing seriously much later, after a life-changing medical diagnosis. By then, my purpose had changed. I no longer wrote to escape reality—I wrote to understand it, to give voice to experiences that had shaped me, and to preserve the stories that might otherwise be forgotten.

I eventually realized I wasn’t simply recording memories. I was searching for meaning within them. Today, I write because I hope to leave behind more than my name. I want to leave behind stories that remind others their lives—and mine—matter.

Do you write in other genres, and if so, what?

Yes. In addition to literary nonfiction and memoir, I write historical speculative fiction, romance with speculative elements, and short fiction.

I’ve completed a historical speculative novel, The Watcher’s Testimony: Bearing Witness, and two memoirs, Citizens of Nowhere and A Flight to Freedom. I’m currently writing Accidental Witness, a romance with speculative elements, and another memoir, Awakened by Papa’s Spirit.

At the moment, I’m seeking representation for Citizens of Nowhere, which explores what it was like to grow up Jewish in the Soviet Union and the lasting effects of displacement, antisemitism, and the search for belonging.

Although I write in different genres, they all explore memory, identity, resilience, and the ways the past continues to shape the present.

What fuels your desire to write?

Curiosity fuels my writing, but so does memory. I’m fascinated by ordinary moments that reveal something extraordinary about being human. A single sentence, a photograph, a prompt, or a childhood memory can become the beginning of an essay or a novel.

I write because I don’t want meaningful stories to disappear. Whether I’m writing memoir or fiction, I’m trying to preserve the voices, experiences, and quiet moments that remind us of who we are. I believe every life holds a story worth telling.

What have been the biggest influences in your writing?

Life has been my greatest teacher. Immigration, family, illness, loss, and resilience have all shaped my voice.

I also grew up reading the Russian, European, and American classics. Chekhov taught me to appreciate the quiet moments that reveal character. Tolstoy and Bulgakov showed me the sweep of history and the complexity of human nature. Alexandre Dumas introduced me to adventure, while Émile Zola, John Steinbeck, and Theodore Dreiser revealed the dignity, struggles, and resilience of ordinary people. Nikos Kazantzakis opened a door to spirituality and the search for meaning.

As a writer, I’ve learned just as much from careful revision and generous mentors as I have from the books that shaped my imagination.

How do you balance writing with everyday life?

I don’t wait for inspiration. I write whenever life allows—sometimes for hours, sometimes for only a few minutes. Consistency matters more than perfect conditions.

I’ve learned that writing doesn’t happen only at my desk. It begins by paying attention. Conversations, walks, medical appointments, and ordinary days often become tomorrow’s stories. Living and writing are inseparable.

Are there any special projects, other pieces, or books you’d like to promote?

I’m currently seeking representation for Citizens of Nowhere, a literary memoir about growing up Jewish in the Soviet Union and the lasting effects of displacement, antisemitism, and the search for belonging.

I’m also finishing Accidental Witness, a romance with speculative elements that explores memory, identity, and the unexpected ways the past reaches into the present.

Alongside these longer projects, I continue to write essays and short memoirs because they allow me to capture life’s quieter moments—one story at a time.

What do you think when you hear, “the good life”?

It’s found in meaningful work, honest relationships, curiosity, and gratitude.

After growing up where some stories could not be spoken, I think the good life is the freedom to tell them—and the privilege of having someone willing to listen.

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Thank you, Etya, for sharing more about your life and writing with us and for being a part of our growing community. We are grateful for the time you spent on this Q&A.

We wish you luck in finding representation for your manuscripts and the best with all your writing projects.

Laura Westby Cannon grew up in Valley City, North Dakota, where it was her job to water the flower garden. Her creative work has appeared in Tahoma Literary Review, Revisionist, and Blue Mountain Review, among others. She’s taught creative and academic writing at the College of Charleston since 2018, and her family resides alongside the zinnias in North Charleston, SC.

Her flash CNF, Beauty Like That, appears in Issue #24.

Tell us a bit about yourself, something more than just what’s in your bio. Perhaps a fun fact not a lot of people know. 

Attending Super Asthma Saturday at the FargoDome one Saturday in the late-90s was an emblem of honor to my younger self. During the event, groups of us asthmatic kids were shuffled from station to station to learn about new spacer technology and talk about our feelings. It was all very important to me back then. I told a visual artist friend years later and she designed a Super Asthma Saturday shirt for me — and a matching one for my newborn daughter — which we still have!

Life is full of moments worthy of writing about. What inspired you to write Beauty Like That? 

I was struck by the abundance of the zinnias in our planter last year and equally surprised by how much joy they brought not only me, but my family, our friends, and people walking by the house. As I drafted this piece, I began to consider how much work happens before the final blooms pop, which nicely mirrors human growth—there’s so much unseen work in the daily rhythms of both.

I also thought about how we — often girls —- are taught to quell their strength, talents, and beauty. The zinnias boasted in a way that offered a kind of permission to just exist for the sake of existing that I want my children to embrace in a way I haven’t always done. I was struck by how deeply moving it is simply to pay attention to the natural world for these lessons.

At what point in your life did you begin writing and working on creative nonfiction?

I took a Creative Nonfiction class in college. Before then, I didn’t even know this kind of writing was a possibility. I wrote an essay with a line about my grandmother and I credit that moment with the beginning of realizing my voice. I declared English as a major soon after.

In the States we call this style creative nonfiction, but there’s a beautiful word in Portuguese for capturing these moments: crónica. I like the concept of chronicling our lives; small proofs that we existed.  

Do you write in other genres, and if so, what?

Yes! I finished the first draft of a fiction manuscript this summer, which was an absolute flurry of excitement.

How do you make expression a part of your daily life, or how do you find a balance between your writing and other responsibilities?

Creative expression is constant. I take a lot of joy from being in the kitchen, especially baking all kinds of bread. I also derive a lot of joy in giving much of it away. The excitement people have!

During these slower summer days, my children and I put on music and paint. Eat popcorn. Do crafts if we absolutely must. Dance.

At the risk of being overly-dramatic, I’ve had to learn to lean into the discomfort, which is a Buddhist principle. What I mean by discomfort is that my time is constantly being disrupted by my kids, my elderly dog, my spouse, the business responsibilities, teaching —- living. One day I’ll again have three hours every morning to write. But now, I’ve learned to write down lines as they arrive. I take time-outs on the back porch for 20-minute “writing sprints” and my family knows not to find me. I’m currently writing this answer with my children sitting in my personal space to watch, but I think it’s important that they see me do these things. I want them to live with joy, too, and I believe creative expression is a big piece of that.

Are there any special projects, other pieces, or books you’d like to promote?

My short story “Momma Had a Mean Streak” was published earlier this year in Blue Mountain Review.”

I’d love to promote a published book, but I’m not there quite yet. I’m looking for an agent (help!).

I’d also be remiss not to also mention the Revisionist Foundation, a new Charleston-area nonprofit that seeks to embolden women in their creative pursuits (art, writing, culinary), which I’m thrilled to help build and watch grow.

What do you think when you hear, “the good life”?

The posture of gratitude in all circumstances, which I don’t say carelessly.

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Thank you, Laura, for sharing a slice of your life with us and for being a part of our growing community. We appreciate you and the time you spent on this Q&A. If you planted zinnias again this year, I bet they are amazing right now!!

We wish you a peaceful close to the summer season, and the best with all your writing endeavors!

Carolyn Williams-Noren is a poet, essayist, and maker of comics. Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and have earned Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations, a Best American Essays notables mention, and the support of the Minnesota State Arts Board, the McKnight Foundation, and Writing x Writers. Carolyn lives in Minneapolis, where she freelances as a copy editor and writer. Besides writing poems and essays, she connects with readers everywhere via the emailed recipe comic “This is good.”

Carolyn was recently interviewed by Lee Colin Thomas, author of Honey in the Dark.

Lee: Tell us about Oil Courses. What is it “about” for you as a poet? What will readers find in the book’s pages?

Carolyn: My dad’s career was with an oil company in Alaska, and I worked for the company myself one summer. My life today is very different from that—I live in Minneapolis, doing work that feels distant from the project of taking oil out of the ground, if not always its opposite. The poems look back at that time “close” to oil with curiosity. I basically asked myself over and over, “When was I closest to oil? What did that do to me? What did I learn?” and wrote the answers. 

Lee: How and when did this project start for you? 

Carolyn: For a long time, I’d set aside this part of my history. I was ashamed of it. And it was easy not to talk about it. But a few things made me want to reconnect with those memories. 

Throughout the 2010s, in conversations about racism, I took in the idea that when we’re not proud of our past, individually or collectively, we cannot make it disappear by declaring ourselves separate from it. We have to look at how injustice has shaped us. I thought a lot about the role of shame for white people in conversations about racism—how shame blocks learning and transformation.

I also had a key conversation with a friend who’s a leader in the climate movement. I mentioned to her that I have a hard time in rooms where the vibe is simply “Oil is evil.” I always feel aware of how much our lives depend on it. 

Her answer, which I didn’t expect, was “You are describing the work that every single one of us needs to do right now.” Meaning to recognize how reliant we are on this form of energy, to acknowledge what we’ve done and are doing. And to choose something different anyway. Even while we’re still made of it, still powered by it. It feels impossible, and yet it’s what’s needed if we’re going to make any kind of livable future. I started to see that my story could have some relevance beyond my own internal mess.

Lee: The table of contents in Oil Courses is very interesting. You’ve titled each poem after an academic subject paired with a number and a date. How did you arrive at this schema? 

Carolyn: For a long time, I kept the poems untitled, or I used first lines or dates as titles. You know this, Lee, because you were one of the patient early readers who would look at a poem, give me encouraging and constructive feedback, and then say “It needs a title!” … and listen patiently while I resisted. 

I felt that adding individual titles too soon would keep me from seeing what else the collection could hold. I didn’t want to close off the possibilities too early.  

The idea of a course catalog, the idea of poems titled with the names of classes—those came after the writing and revision and reordering, and after many months of doing nothing, just waiting for the idea that would hold all these together as a book. And then, after that idea came, it felt important to keep the dates; I want readers to have a sense of when and where they’re landing as they enter each poem. 

Lee: What went into your decision to forego chronological order when assembling the manuscript?

Carolyn: Some of it had to do with inviting readers in. Some information needs to come early so the later poems make sense. 

You’d think a chronological telling would be friendlier, but the book isn’t just about what happened over some years in the late 1900s—it’s about standing here and looking back at that time (re-entering some of those memories for the first time in many years), and what happens when we bring those events into now. I chose the order pretty intuitively. Maybe that’s just another way of saying I can’t explain all my reasons! In some ways, the order mirrors the process of remembering.

Lee: What do you understand differently now compared to before you wrote the book?

Carolyn: The biggest new understanding came from a conversation I had with a high school classmate. I hadn’t talked with this person for many years, and I (creepily?) found him online and arranged a phone call because I wanted to compare notes on some memories, and also to hear his reflections generally. His dad worked for the same company my dad did, and like mine, his family was only in Anchorage because of that job. 

In the course of this conversation, he said in the most light, easy way, “I definitely feel a deep sense of hypocrisy every day of my life.” 

And hearing that, I say in the poem, “I feel closer to home than I’ve been in a long time.” That posture—hypocrisy, embraced without anguish—was a real gift of my childhood. 

In moving away from oil, hypocrisy is inevitable. If we’re paying attention, we’ll be suffused, constantly, with knowledge of our complicity, and we can’t let that stop us from pushing for change. To paraphrase another passage from the book, “rely” and “fight” do live in the same house—they must. We have to be ok with that discomfort if we’re going to get this world onto a different path.

Lee: The setting for much of Oil Courses is Alaska, a place often described as a wilderness or, as you put it in the book, for its vastness. How does that place of ice and snow, moose and bear, influence the individual poems and the book overall?

Carolyn: One thing is that wherever you live—especially as a child, but really always—is going to feel ordinary, possibly boring. 

I worked retail jobs some summers, serving tourists who were walking around having moment-by-moment spiritual experiences: The mountains! The view of the inlet! They’d glow at me and ask, “What must it be like to live here?!” And I’d be like, “Lady, I’m just making the popcorn.” Or whatever. 

And now I’m an outsider. These are my memories—of the moose encounter, of what I knew about bears, what I knew about the mud flats, what happened in our high school parking lot, and so on. When I lived them, they were ordinary (a word I maybe overuse in the book). But I’m using those stories now as an outsider. I haven’t set foot in Alaska since 2004! 

So Alaska is a character in the book, or several. “Wild” and “far” are sort of the default metaphors for Alaska, aren’t they? I hope I’m also working against those a little bit.

Lee: What is the role of guilt in this work?

Carolyn: I read somewhere—I wish I could remember where—that we are too often taught that we’re both innocent and powerless, and that to repair what’s wrong we need to change both of those things. To see our complicity and our power.

In conversations about climate change, there can be a sense that we’re all simply victims of giant and evil companies that work in their own interests and not ours. There’s truth to that, but also we’re never as far from oil as we think we are. 

I want to show that to be guilty, to be complicit, doesn’t look like you’d think it would. Chances are it looks like what you’re doing right now—whatever you’re doing. I think a lot about these lines from “Essay [1983–Now],” the longest poem in the book:

Your coffee cup in the morning: I’m telling you that’s
exactly how it feels to be complicit, to benefit. I lay
on the floor figuring out my math homework, I’m saying.

I’m saying I watched Three’s Company after school.

I want to be careful not to take that all the way to nihilism. “We’re all guilty no matter what, so why try to change things?” That can’t be it. We need that other part, too—to notice our power and use it. 

Lee: Tell us about the cover art. What’s the story behind it?

Carolyn: I’ve loved Molly Megan Keenan’s collages for a long time, and I’m so grateful she said yes to creating this piece for the cover. She read the poems, we talked, and she did her thing. I couldn’t have predicted what she came up with, and yet it’s very true to the book—perfect. 

One little treat: The oil derrick on the back cover is cut from the Isaac Asimov book How Did We Find Out About Oil?, which appears in a couple of the poems.

More About the interviewer:

Lee Colin Thomas is a poet, communications consultant, and university instructor. He is the author of Honey in the Dark, which won the 2020 Brighthorse Prize for poetry and was published in Fall 2021. Lee’s poems have appeared in Poet Lore, Water~Stone Review, Narrative Magazine, and various other journals. He lives in Minneapolis.

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Thank you, Lee and Carolyn, for working with us on this interview. We appreciate you being part of our growing community, and we wish you both the best in your current and future writing endeavors.

Christopher R.A. Adams is a non-binary writer based in Nebraska. They hold a BA in English and Professional Writing, and their nonfiction has been nominated for the Dean Joseph H. Cash Award for Excellence in Writing.

Their flash fiction, The Evening Train, appears in Issue #23. It is their first published piece.

Tell us a bit about yourself.

My name is Christopher R. A. Adams (they/them), and I am an Omaha-based writer who is currently using my writing to explore that which cannot be escaped: death, the divine, love, and the oppression of capitalism. Beyond my writing, I love reading, weightlifting, hiking, thinking too much, and my beautiful partner.

What was the inspiration behind The Evening Train?

During my senior year of college, I decided to read Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s On Death and Dying, which, from memory, is predominantly a series of interviews with end-of-life patients on the nature of life and their perspectives on its conclusion. The reading experience was harrowing; I was disturbed and fascinated by the first-hand descriptions of life’s final days. These thoughts mingled with my many bitter experiences in hospitals and with medical professionals to become “The Evening Train.”

What unique or surprising detail can you tell us about the revision process, and/or the final version of it?

My initial attempts to write what would become “The Evening Train” were mired by far too many ideas, such that it split into two (and potentially three) short stories. Where the current version shows a rather typical old man’s final moments, the original story was about an old Hollywood starlet’s recollection of her life and a neglected lesbian romance during her 20s as she dies from a fall. The many revisions that led to the final story were valuable lessons in the ancient wisdom of KISS.  

What do you hope readers take from it?

I hope readers become more willing to think about their own death and final moments. Death is a chore we all must get around to doing one way or another. I don’t speak from experience (I’m sorry to ghost enthusiasts and my grandfather), but I have to believe the whole affair is easier if you have given it some forethought. I hope readers find in Mr. Ross a potential future for themselves or those around them and begin to think about how they may prepare for their own evening trains before they hear the whistle.

At what point in your life did you begin writing and working on fiction?

I’ve been writing since I was nine but decided to write things worth reading at twenty-one. I started as a child writing Star Wars fan fiction, and, by fifteen, I would have the odd stab at ripping off Tolkien while stealing elements from some mythology to hide my crime. When I went to college and was formally introduced to short fiction, I fell in love; “Hunters in the Snow,” “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” and “The Sculptor’s Funeral” stole my heart. The amount of meaning that could be shoved into so few pages made my head spin. Every short story I have written since has been an attempt to condense my understanding and insights into as few pages as possible.

When or why did you decide to start publishing your work??

In 2022, I was introduced to the idea of publishing work through one of my college courses. I was always told my writing was good, so why shouldn’t I? The following year, I submitted a story that I had become proud of to a journal, and it got rejected. That denial soiled my pride and kept me from trying again until this year, when I decided to try again in the hopes of making something of all the scribbling I had done. And now my story is available for all to read!

What fuels your desire to write (or engage in other creative outlets)?

What keeps me coming back to the keyboard is the chance to live beyond myself. Unlike the restrictions of my singular life, writing allows me to step into new modes of being, to see new perspectives, and learn from them. If I want to know if there’s life after love, I can step into being a widow and all its burdens. If I want to confront my mortality, I can become a man in his final days. If I want to be betrayed by God, I can become a prophet. I can’t deny writing, because it gives me more than mere living could ever.

What have been the biggest influences on your writing?

Leo Tolstoy and Albert Camus taught me how minimal a story could be and still enrapture an audience. T. S. Eliot and J.R.R. Tolkien showed me how to massage ancient symbols into new meanings and understandings. The stillness at 4 am made me pay attention, and the hustle at 5 pm kept me from lingering. The sex I’ve had sanctified hedonism, but the sex I haven’t had reminded me of the inevitability of regret. And Paradise Lost is proof that prequels and in-between-quels can be good if you actually give a shit. 

How do you make expression a part of your daily life, or how do you find a balance between your writing and other responsibilities?

For better or worse, writing seeps into my life whether I make room for it or not. If I ignore it too long, I’ll become crotchety until I get behind a keyboard. To keep the desire at bay, I do my best to schedule at least a couple of hour-long writing sessions a week before I go to work so my mind is fresh. If I’m lucky, I can manage longer sessions on the weekend.

What do you think when you hear, “the good life”?

I think a slow spring morning with an open annotated book, a lover in arm’s reach, and a few dozen trees in view. String even a few such moments together, and a life can become good.

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Thank you, Christopher, for sharing your writing with us, for spending extra time on this Q&A, and for being a part of our growing community. Best wishes for all your writing endeavors now and in the future! Write on, indeed!!

Kenton K. Yee’s recent poems appear (or will soon) in Kenyon, Threepenny, Cincinnati, RHINO, Quarterly West, Poetry Northwest, Plume Poetry, Poetry Wales, Rattle, Best Microfiction 2026, and other venues. His debut poetry chapbook is due to drop from Bull City Press in 2027. He writes from Northern California. 

His poem, Ode to the Guest Star, appears in Issue #23.

Tell us a bit about yourself.

Originally trained as a theoretical physicist, I’ve delved into fields ranging from math and physics to law and business, trying on more hats than I’ll list here. One of my favorite hats is poet, which I put on during the work-from-home COVID years with no formal training. I’ve been writing ever since. Like Ode to the Guest Star, many of my poems have science allusions, but my aims in poetry are always artistic, not didactic or scientific.

What was the inspiration behind Ode to the Guest Star?

Memories of Caltech’s Millikan Library, my interest in astronomy, the long history of the Guest Star from its original sighting in China to its subsequent rediscovery centuries later in England—a reminder that humanity is just a blink of an eye in cosmic time.

What unique or surprising detail can you tell us about the revision process, and/or the final version of it?

I’m an obsessive, compulsive reviser. The more I like a poem, the more I keep tweaking it. I’ve been tweaking this poem for almost three years. The most noticeable recent change is the addition of two words, “Ode to,” to the original title. 

What did you learn (about yourself, craft, or life in general) through writing and revising it?

What I learned is that life and everything in it—especially poetry—is a journey, not an end-goal or trophy, so one had better enjoy the journey, which means one has to pay attention. With each poem, I learned to pay closer attention, attention to every pattern, turn, break, word, comma, and surprise.

What do you hope readers take from it?

I want to pique readers and leave them curious about my work. Beyond this, I don’t have any message or meaning. I want a poem to be a “thing-in-itself and the thing-for-you,” to quote Rae Armantrout out of context.

At what point in your life did you begin writing and working on poetry?

When I began working from home in 2020 during COVID. I had participated in online writing and poetry courses off and on beginning in 2012, but never took writing seriously until I had the time to do it during COVID.

Do you write in other genres, and if so, what?

When I took up writing in 2012, it was to write my great American novel. But it was too hard to get the kind of handholding and feedback I needed as a novice to get far. I found poetry writing much easier to get into than longer-form writing. A few lines drafted every morning accumulated quickly into short poems, which I used to get feedback (mostly rejections) from literary journals, but this practice drew me in, made me feel like I was making progress.

What fuels your desire to write (or engage in other creative outlets)?

I guess I’m addicted now to the serotonin kick of an occasional acceptance. Also, since there’s no money, career, love, or friendship at stake, poetry submission is the closest approximation to a stress-free game I can play. And working on a poem for a couple of hours is a helluva lot more gratifying than playing video games or TV, which invariably leaves me feeling hollow.

When or why did you decide to start publishing your work?

Besides the serotonin kick I get from an occasional acceptance, I need the motivation and discipline that submission due dates provide to sit and finish poems. Without submission deadlines, my poems would all languish in revision purgatory. And without acceptances, I’d keep revising a poem forever. In short, the submission-acceptance process helps me pace myself.

What have been the biggest influences in your writing?

I’m primarily influenced by specific poems, not bodies of work. That said, several poems of Wallace Stevens, Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, Stanley Kunitz, Larry Levis, and Rae Armantrout spring to mind. This is an incomplete list.  

Are there any special projects, other pieces, or books you’d like to promote? Feel free to include links.

My debut chapbook, “Making the Best of It,” will drop from Bull City Press in August 2027. It’s a series of poems that metaphorically and playfully tracks my circuitous journey from a blue-collar immigrant family to academic math and physics, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and (perhaps not so finally) art and poetry. I like to think of “Making” as my bungling attempt at Joyce’s “A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man.”

What do you think when you hear, “the good life”?

I think of a lit journal that curates art that sees the uplifting side of a situation, e.g., finds a burst of light in an otherwise dark sky. 

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Thank you, Kenton, for sharing your poetry with us and for the time you spent on this Q&A. We wish a peaceful and prosperous summer, and also the best with your writing endeavors!

Ayoung Kim is a writer and artist. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The ManifestStation, Khora, Defenestration Humor Magazine, and Best Travelers’ Tales, among others. She is originally from San Francisco, and her teeth are still crooked.

Her flash CNF, Speaking in Tongues, appears in Issue #23.

Tell us a bit about yourself.

When I was nine and ten years old, I used to sneak out of my house in the middle of the night. The sight of the black night, the willow tree’s branch scraping my window saying, Come out and play! —the urge was irresistible. I’d pull on my elastic waist skirt, tear a piece of notebook paper and roll it up. I roamed the sidewalks pretending to speak Spanish, gesticulating with my notebook-paper-cigarette between my fingers, pointing emphatically at my man who needed a strong talking to, as I’d watched on Mexican telenovas. I sashayed, causing my skirt to swirl around my knees. Although a child of Korean immigrants, I was smitten with Mexican culture. I turned onto the main road, walking straight into the beam of headlights. It was my moment. I stuck my cigarette in my mouth and took a long drag.

What unique or surprising detail can you tell us about the revision process, and/or the final version of it?

As I worked several versions, I wondered about how to end the story, if there was a way to reference the beginning with the Dentist’s quasi-sexual probings. I saw how the narrator and the Dentist were alike in expressing their lust.

What did you learn (about yourself, craft, or life in general) through writing and revising it?

Although this essay came from a memory, the danger is transcribing it instead of allowing space for other images and narratives to come through. I first wrote this three years ago, and have periodically returned to it with fresh eyes. Each time, a bit more would reveal itself. Also, there is the part of me that retains visceral emotions as the child, but as the adult, benefits from distance, and I worked to include both perspectives. I’ve learned to not rush the revision process.

What do you hope readers take from it?

Insist your dentist wear gloves!

Do you write in other genres, and if so, what?

I started out by writing travel essays, but have branched to writing lyric and flash essays and prose poems. Also, recently, a couple of my humor stories have been published.

What fuels your desire to write (or engage in other creative outlets)?

Louise Glück, poet, said: Anyone who writes is a seeker. You look at a blank page and you’re seeking. The role is assigned to us and never removed. I think this is an unbelievable blessing. The blank page represents my struggle to connect dots and land in a place of clarity. I find it exposing, terrifying, exhilarating, and humbling. Writing is the only activity that brings this out of me, and as such, ceased to be an option a long time ago. I must write. This is my blessing.

What have been the biggest influences in your writing?

I’ll point to hypocrisy and absurdity, and how as a child I was able to spot these and see the tragedy and comedy. These two themes regularly feature in my work.

How do you make expression a part of your daily life, or how do you find a balance between your writing and other responsibilities?

If I don’t get in any writing, I’ll draw something, my thumb, fingers. So many disembodied fingers.

What do you think when you hear, “the good life”?

La Dolce Vita: me in Rome in 1959, splashing in the Trevi Fountain in a cleavage-bearing gown eating a giant espresso gelato in a waffle cone.

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Thank you, Ayoung, for sharing a slice of your life with us and for being a part of our growing community. We appreciate you and the time you spent on this Q&A. Cheers to giant waffle cones and swirling skirts! We wish a peaceful and prosperous summer, and also the best with your writing endeavors!

Kelsey L. Smoot (they/he/Kelz) is a gender theorist, an elective Southerner, a writer, and a poet. Their autoethnographic style has become the lens through which they understand and reflect on their experience navigating the US sociopolitical landscape. They are the winner of the 2021 Sad Girls Club Spring Literary Contest and the Grand Prize Winner of the 2024 Button Poetry Video Contest. Kelz is a Tin House Workshop alum, a Pushcart Prize nominee, a Best of the Net nominee, and a Best New Poets nominee.

Their poem “For Kenny” won the 2023 Honeybee Poetry Prize, and their latest collection of poems, SOULMATE AS A VERB, is available now from MIT Press. Their previous chapbooks include: we was bois together and Muse.

You’ve described yourself as a self-trained poet. How has forging your own path shaped your voice and approach to craft?

I think being self-trained definitely means being intentional about studying craft elements in poetics by reading the work of other poets, by going out of my way to seek poetry resources. Those who know me well know that I definitely enjoy a good form. I think it trains a different muscle than free-verse poetry does, so to that end, I often tell people that I think that poetry is both an art and a discipline. The art component of it is so fun to engage and explore and share with the world, but I do think the ‘discipline’ component–which to me sometimes includes writing poems that are more functional practices and experiments than they are creative expressions–is definitely important for my overall development as a poet.

What poets or writers have most influenced your work, and in what ways?

So there are kind of the writers that are in my personal Mount Rushmore—so Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, and James Baldwin—but also June Jordan, Lucille Clifton, and contemporary poets like Cameron Awkward-Rich and K.B. Brookins. Each of these writers (and many, many more that I don’t feel like I have enough space across a lifetime of empty pages to write about and express my gratitude for), has created something that I fully see myself in; they’ve reflected their experiences back to me, and my experiences back to me. And I have ultimately realized that I think that is also a huge goal in my writing. I think a lot of writers want to write something that’s completely original and to feel like they are pioneering something, whereas I am personally so thrilled and honored to be writing within the lineage of writers and thinkers that have come before me. Each of these writers has challenged me to think critically about my identities and how they show up in my work. They each are very reflective and nostalgic, but also highly forward-thinking and futuristic, and have a penchant for sharing hard truths and not shying away from literary honesty and authenticity—something I hope to do in my work as well.

I read about the story of your brother inspiring the title of SOULMATE AS A VERB in an Electric Lit feature, and I was struck by your idea that soulmates are created through “trust and mutuality.” The title reframes love as something we do rather than something we find. How did that conversation shape the larger vision of this collection, and what does that shift mean to you personally and poetically?

Yeah, so with regard to SOULMATE AS A VERB, with the title being something that was born of a conversation with my brother, it definitely informed the vision of this project as a body of work that would intentionally deviate from or complicate popular notions of “soulmates.” I certainly wanted the concept of soulmate to function in this collection as a tool, a lens through which we can see ourselves, our loved ones, our communities, and also our political orientations more clearly, and determine how to embody a practice of love that is less about predestination and romantic alignment and much more about commitment, agency, and devotion to others. Personally and politically, that has meant building out my concepts of love that don’t revolve solely around a romantic partner. I’m still always good for a love poem, but I think some of my best love poems within the collection are those written to and for non-romantic loves across the expanse of my life.

What do love and soulmates look like to you right now? Must soulmates be romantic, or can they take many forms?

Right now, love and soulmates to me look like choices. I absolutely don’t think that soulmates must be romantic. I’d argue that most people are more likely to connect with non-romantic soulmates in their lifetimes , just because I do think romantic love—especially operating in systems like patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy—is highly precarious and volatile. But I think that most people would say that they could not survive their daily lives without their communities, their families, and their friends, and I do think there’s always a radical potential to build soulmate connections within those groups and to take it a step further, to organize movements around viewing our communities as soulmates.

The description of your collection outlines themes of kinship, masculinity, grief, and desire. Which of these themes surprised you most while writing?

I would say none of these themes particularly surprised me, because they are themes that I am constantly thinking about, writing about, and discussing within my daily life. I think my creative work really is so truly an extension of my inner world as well as my academic writing and research, so to that end I think it just felt really beautiful and fitting to have a new space in which to explore these themes that could be messier, more honest, creative, and intimate.

Your collection blends various poetic forms. What draws you to experimenting with form? Is there one form you gravitate towards? What is it about that form that speaks to you?

Yeah, I think experimenting in form just makes poets so much more intentional. There is this poem called “The Quiet World” by Jeffrey McDaniel that I love, and in the poem people are limited to 167 words per day. For a chatty dude like myself, that’s a terrifying thought, but also in the poem it is clear that this restraint forces individuals to be so incredibly thoughtful about each word that they utter. And in the same capacity, I think that that’s what forms can do for a poet. I think they force you to be disciplined and make hard choices. I really like the Kwansaba, of which there are several in SOULMATE AS A VERB. It’s a short form with very specific limitations on line count, line length, and word length. To that end, I think you can cover so much ground in a Kwansaba because it isn’t supposed to be this sprawling epic form of writing. It’s this, for me, short, tight little glimpse into a topic or a moment or feeling. I have always loved writing poems that have left enough space for me and the reader to meet each other on the page and co-create some additional meaning that resonates specifically with them.

How does this collection differ from the poems you wrote earlier in your career or in your chapbooks we was bois together and Muse?

I think poems that I wrote earlier in my career were really written, by and large, to process my feelings, so some of them read a little bit more like diary entries. Some of them, I would also say, are lowkey embarrassing in that they are really me just fumbling around and discovering what my poetic voice was going to be. And then moving into we was bois together and Muse, I think those are both projects born of trying to create companion writings for my academic work, which I felt like was so much less accessible and available than these poems could or would be. But I think that SOULMATE AS A VERB really is an offering of reflections–refractions, theory, political advocacy, love poems, and just attempts to offer the world some documentation of what it’s like to exist in the body that I do, in the time that I do, still seeking love and connection. I think these poems are more outward facing.

How does writing poetry help you make sense of the world around you? How does it also function as a form of advocacy or witness?

I do think that poetry does still absolutely help me make sense of the world around me, in that it is the way in which I bear intimate witness to my life. I think that there are things that we can read in poems that might challenge us or awaken us in a capacity that feels more approachable or less politically intimidating. A lot of people have said that they’ve shared my poems with a loved one in order to shed some light on a particular aspect of an experience or social justice that they otherwise might struggle to converse about with that person. I definitely think that poetry has become my best method for activism at this point in my life.

These can feel like hateful and frightening times. Where do you find hope or resilience during difficult seasons?

Honestly, I find hope and resilience in youth culture. It feels wild to recognize how quickly I went from feeling so young and inexperienced to starting to feel like a bit of an elder, especially when it comes to younger queer folks, but I think that the younger people in my life—from Gen Z adults that I work with and/or little kids in my life whose adulthood will likely be shaped by a very different set of material conditions than mine currently are—are all so curious and loving and brave, I think, in comparison to how I felt at their ages. These are really scary times, and yet I’ve never lost faith in the radical potential for humanity to outlive these oppressive systems and for people to keep dreaming of a different world. I hope to do that in my work, but also I hope to embody that optimism in my life.

Writing often asks us to be both protected and exposed. How are you feeling after the debut of your first full-length collection?

I feel really proud. I look at how far I have come as an artist and just as a thinker, and I realize that I will likely look back on these poems with massively different perspectives and experiences down the road and still feel so glad that these are the poems that I got to kind of introduce myself with into the literary world. The people around me know that I am committed to a consistent sort of vocalization of my truth, and I also do still strive to protect the privacy of people that I talk about in my work, but I am always working toward becoming more courageous, more honest, and more free. So I think that’s my biggest priority at this time when the book is so newly in the world.

How do you hope readers respond to SOULMATE AS A VERB? What conversations do you hope the book inspires?

I hope that readers respond to SOULMATE AS A VERB by engaging their loved ones in more conversations. I hope they feel emboldened to take up more space in their bodies and and in their communities, and I hope that they feel galvanized to adopt a framework of love that decenters romantic connection, or at the very least, broadens the concept to include all different types of loves and all different types of soulmates.

What do you hope younger queer and trans readers might feel when they encounter this book?

I hope that younger queer and trans readers might feel seen when they encounter this book. I told a friend the other day I certainly think I’ve written many of the things that I really felt like I needed at 16 but didn’t have access to or couldn’t find because they didn’t yet exist. I hope that younger queer and trans readers also feel emboldened to write their own truths and make their own art, which could look like poetry but could also look like any other authentic expression of self.

After this debut, what kinds of stories or projects are calling to you next?

After this debut, I am working on expanding my arts writing, as well as longer-form essays, but I am also definitely in the works of developing a second full-length manuscript tentatively titled Hope Is the Next Best Thing to Certainty. I want my next iteration of poems to be forward-thinking, more experimental, but certainly still continuing some of the themes of this work around love, kinship, truth, and liberation.

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Congratulations, Kelz, on the creation of such a stunning debut full-length collection, and THANK YOU! for being a part of our growing community. We appreciate you and the time you spent with Christine on this interview. We hope you keep the celebration going for this book and wish you the best with future writing endeavors!