A Conversation with Writer SAHAR DELIJANI

I’m drawn to how concepts such as resistance, the endurance of memory, and inherited trauma are reimagined and explored visually. This gives a new dimension to my own thinking.

A Conversation with Writer EMILY JON TOBIAS

I begin when an image arises from a spontaneous feeling created by sensory input. Often, this happens with a memory, a photo, a song, a scent. The image has an entire universe embedded in it. I see the whole piece. Then, I must write through each layer. I never work in a linear fashion in either time or space. In this way, I can say I am a vertical writer rather than horizontal.

A Conversation with Writer LISA MECHAM

I try not to edit until a draft is done, because the perfectionist in me is always searching for a way to sabotage the vulnerability it takes to write in the first place.

A Conversation with Writer M LIN

The artist’s body, in addition to their mind, forms a relationship with the work, as well as the physical space. Language, by nature, lacks that, or it’s almost the antithesis of body - it takes you out of your own body, out of the physical space you’re in. Nevertheless, it does have the power to evoke a visceral feeling.

A Conversation with Writer KERRY DONOGHUE

Maybe my goal will be grand, like finishing a scene, but I also count submitting, marketing, and posting book-related content on social media. By breaking it down into one attainable achievement, I’ve found that I actually get more done.

A Conversation with Writer YUKTI NARANG

In fact, sometimes it’s not knowing that generates the most compelling stories. The wondersome quality of art. The what-ifs. The buts. And I think readers sense that. They engage differently when they know the story was written by another person, someone who has felt strongly about the moments, even wriggled at some level.

A Conversation with Writer YASMINA DIN MADDEN

I do not outline stories, but do have a quasi-outline for my novel-in-progress. When I write I edit as I go--can't fight nature, I've tried. The beauty of being an edit-as-you-go writer is that when you finish a manuscript, it's pretty polished and doesn't need a ton of revision. The beast is that I write excruciatingly slowly.

A Conversation with Writer YVONNE CONZA

And in uncovering what shimmers beneath the surface, I’m reminded that discovery itself is connection, that even in solitude, we’re part of a shared pulse.

A Conversation with Writer VICTORIA SPIRES

I am drawn to the idea of water as the dominant force that shapes a landscape, and the contrast to the ways it does this, through seeping, sifting, trickling and torrenting. I also think about the fens as a place of great compression, conversely for a place which is so flat and where the sky is such a dominant force. It's almost as if the weight of all that sky cramps you, forces you into yourself.

A Conversation with Poet ELISE POWERS

I think it’s vital that humans remain at the center of the creative process because stories are how we better understand ourselves and each other. They remind us that we are, above all else, alive.

A Conversation with Writer TINA CARTWRIGHT

In terms of the process I usually write the first draft quickly, seek feedback around the third or fourth draft, but this one is only ready for feedback now. It's taken much longer than I anticipated.

A Conversation with Writer VERONICA TUCKER

I balance writing around my full-time work in emergency and addiction medicine and the rhythm of raising three kids, so I have learned to be flexible. Sometimes I write in bursts between shifts or during short pauses in the day. I rarely outline in a traditional way; I tend to discover the work as it unfolds, following an image, phrase, or emotion until it finds its form.

A Conversation with Writer NOAH FALCK

I have too many notebooks. They are filled with sketches of language. Things I see when I'm on the bus, at the park, in the car driving to the store. Some have collages inside them. Some hold the language of other writers.

A Conversation with Writer RAECHEL ANNE JOLIE

Most art I've hung on my own walls have been radical activist printmaker stuff that looks kind of zine-like, but painting is so bold, so certain in a totally different kind of way.

A Conversation with Writer KYUNGHEE KIM

You have to listen to your own creative rhythm and carve out spaces of time where you are able. 

A Conversation with Writer RANDALL J. TYRONE

I will have a song playing on repeat for a few hours and use that background noise to create a mental echo chamber. The song becomes a drumming or bass strumming that allows me to play/stretch myself over instrumentation. I become the varying noise in the room.

A Conversation with Writer SELENA MERCURI

The creative process involved a lot of sitting with uncomfortable emotions—the exhaustion of depression, the confusion of growing up and not understanding your own desires or sexuality, the way people closest to you often hurt you the most. Fundamentally, it's about the difference between surviving your life and actually inhabiting it.

A Conversation with Writer BROOKE SHAFFNER

My years of immigrant justice work in New York City, from which COUNTRY OF UNDER draws, were a way of staying connected to a home I remain deeply grateful for.

A Conversation with Writer CAL HOFFMAN

I have an idea about the other characters and the main event of the novel, yet I work without an outline and I go hour-by-hour, page-by-page. I astonish myself every time I sit down to write. I keep this daily process fresh and spontaneous.

A Conversation with Poet MAYA WILLIAMS

Because I was raised by a Biracial, single mom who was raised to move around as a third culture kid, it makes sense that she raised me in three different states in the South: Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. It influenced my writing and thinking about the world by making me sit with the identities I hold amidst different settings of migration.