Every year we have a talented collection of participants whose work is featured at our Gala. Over the next few weeks, we will interview and get to know some of our writers from the 2024 Gala: Twist of Fate.
Next up is Anthos! Check out their interview below.
1. How did it feel to have your work performed at the Gala?
It felt amazing! Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend, but just hearing my piece was selected made my entire week. This was the second writing competition I’ve ever entered, so being featured was a huge confidence boost and really validated my desire to write professionally.
Since I couldn’t attend, the WGI was kind enough to send me a short video of my piece being performed, and it was everything I had hoped for. I don’t generally write with the intention of others reading my work, so I was curious how the actor would go about performing my piece. She did wonderfully and really brought the feelings I was trying to evoke to life in a dramatic manner. I’m so happy I had this opportunity!
2. What is something you’d like to achieve with writing?
My answer to this has changed over the years. As a little kid, I wrote short stories as entertainment, trying to emulate my favorite books. In middle school, I wrote short stories as a way of having fun with my friends. In high school poetry became a way to express the large and complicated feelings I was having at the time, since I had just recently moved and was still trying to find my place. Now, as a college freshman, I’m working to get my writing recognized more in order to see if a career as a writer is possible for me.
One day, I hope my writing has the chance to be read on a wide scale so other queer people (especially queer youth) and TCKs (Third Culture Kids) can feel more understood and validated. I want my work to show them that yes, while being ourselves may hurt, it doesn’t have to. In fact, it’s something to find joy in. Books and poetry did that for me, and I want to do that for others too. Growing up, I always had to settle for approximations of my experiences at best, no representation at all at worst. It hurt that, as a huge bookworm, I could never find books that seemed to know me. I want my work to be that difference, to be a place where people can be understood without needing to explain anything, somewhere they can share both their pain and their joy, their past and their future.
3. How has your writing grown over the years?
My writing has definitely improved since I started writing short stories in elementary school! Over the past few years specifically, I’ve been writing a lot of poetry, with my older work being much darker, formatted, and simple than the ones I write now. It was very choppy and to-the-point.
Now, I have a lot more finesse and the themes of my work are more varied. I write about happiness, fear, my dreams, my memories, the farm I used to work at, the random image of a forest I pictured when I was walking my dog, the ingredients of my smoothie… anything that pops in my head, really. As for my short story writing, I’ve gotten much better at knowing when to summarize and when to paint a picture of a scene. Additionally, dialogue, which was a weak point, is now a strength. As for the future, I hope to go back to exploring form poetry and maybe get back into short stories using the tools I’ve gathered from my freeform poetry.
4. What are some of your favorite books, TV shows, movies?
I’m a huge bookworm, so it’s very hard to choose, but some of my favorite books include: The Sunbearer Trials by Aiden Thomas, This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, Self-Made Boys by Anna Marie McLemore, the Magnus Chase Trilogy by Rick Riordan, I Wish You All the Best by Mason Deaver, The Feeling of Falling in Love by Mason Deaver, Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo, Ander and Santi Were Here by Jonny Garza Villa, and Sorted by Jackson Bird.
My favorite TV show has to be Heartstopper!
My favorite movies are Luca, most of the Avengers movies, Big Hero 6, and Pete’s Dragon.
5. What do you like to do for fun (other than writing)?
A lot of things! The three biggest ones are probably listening to music, reading, and working out. I also enjoy hanging out with my friends, taking my dog for walks, hanging out with the cat of the farm I work at, and learning random facts about languages, history, and biology on the internet.
6. How did participating in a WGI (Writers Guild Initiative) workshop help your writing, (if so)?
On the surface, the WGI Workshop I attended didn’t have a huge impact on my writing. Sure, it reintroduced stream-of-consciousness pieces and taught me writing outside my comfort zone leads to great ideas, but it didn’t change much of how I write. However, it did have a big impact on my confidence.
Before the workshop, I rarely– if ever– shared my work, so I had no idea how it was going to hold up against my peers’. To my delight, my mentors and peers all loved my work– even though it was nearly all half finished and not written in my usual form or genres. In fact, my Romeo-and-Juliet-inspired romance story between two star-crossed apples, which I thought was terrible and silly, was everyone’s favorite. The workshop encouraged me to expand my horizons and have faith in my abilities
7. What/Who inspires your writing?
My life! The large majority of my poems are just feelings I needed to express in the moment, then came back and edited, and edited, and edited some more. Another big inspiration is childhood memories, as well as random images my brain conjures up (I have a very detailed imagination) that I can’t resist trying to bring to life.
As for influences on my actual writing, I’d have to say (in no particular order): Neil Hilborn, Kevin Kantor, Safia Elhillo, and Ollie Schminkey. I definitely recommend you check out their work! They all have great videos online and some books as well!
8. What is your favorite piece of writing (by you or otherwise)?
Right now, my favorite piece of writing is from one of my classmates in the creative writing course I took in college last semester. The poem is called “Stones (Grave, Head, and Others)” and my classmate did an absolutely amazing job of using imagery, archaic diction, very strong and specific verbs, cadence, plays-on-words, enjambment/line spacing, repetition… almost everything you could imagine!
I interpreted it to be about how queer people are affected by the narratives many people spread in the name of religion. As of now, it’s not published anywhere yet, but I really hope one day it will be so I can talk about it with more people!
9. Any advice, tips, resources or guidance you’d like to share for someone who wants to write?
Yes, of course!
1) Write your ideas down! No idea is stupid. I’ve literally written poems about two apples falling in love and cocoa powder sprinkled on peanut butter. Neil Hilborn, one of my favorite poets, wrote a poem called “The Dating Habits of the North American Hipster” (highly recommend you watch the video on YouTube). Besides, exploring every idea will help your writing stay fresh.
2) Similarly: practice, practice! This will help you find your voice and will also obviously improve your writing.
3) Make something satisfying to you, something that you can’t help but to reread twice before you go to bed because you can’t believe something you wrote was that good.
4) By the same token: be genuine. Write something that feels true, not what you think you’re supposed to write.
5) Take notes from other poets, but also don’t be afraid to go in the complete opposite direction. If you need inspiration or examples, check out some poetry books from the library, look at a creative writing website, go to an open mic, etc. My favorite places for inspiration are the following YouTube Channels: Button Poetry, Write About Now, and All Def Poetry.
6) Go out of your comfort zone and try new genres, forms, fonts, themes, literary devices, etc.
7) Tips from my Creative Writing professor: write the universal through the particular, and the abstract through the concrete. In other words, making something more specific and detailed actually makes it more universally relatable. Writing something you can physically imagine and see helps to better translate invisible aspects of the poem, like emotion.
8) Find a friend! Ask them for honest feedback on your writing, and offer to do the same. You both will get critiques and can discuss what you were trying to accomplish (and how to achieve that if it didn’t translate) in a super low-stakes manner… and who knows, maybe you’ll inspire each other. My friends have helped me a lot over the years!
