We love learning more about our contributors, and an interview seemed like a fun way to hear more about the writers and artists we publish, so we gave them a choice of questions to answer. We hope you also enjoy hearing more about the artists and their works. Check out Issue 30 for "Corn Snake #31" from Mary Soon Lee.


What was the inspiration for the piece published in the issue?
My daughter has a corn snake, which I look after when she's away at college. About a month after she first left for college, I began an occasional sequence of poems about Kettle (the corn snake).


Who are some of your favorite writers, and what do you like about them?
AAAAH! So many favorites! My list shifts with time and mood. Ursula K. Le Guin is always in the mix. I love her prose, which, to me, has the force and often the cadence of poetry without being fussy or ornate. I love her worldbuilding. And many of her works contain characters whom I also love: her Earthsea books, "The Dispossessed," her Annals of the Western Shore trilogy. I love her writing at shorter lengths too - short stories, novellas, all superb. And I love the heart of her stories, the ethical core, the compassion.

I see I have already taken more space than you likely expected. So I will content myself with adding Jane Austen (no explanation needed), Tolkien (no explanation needed), Patrick O'Brian (for sweeping me into his historical naval setting and holding me there for twenty books by the evolving friendship between his two main characters), Gwynedd Rae (for her books about Mary Plain, an unusual first-class bear from the bear pits at Berne, which brightened my childhood).


What is your #1 advice for other writers?
#1 advice: read widely. Bonus #2 advice: sit down regularly and try to write, avoiding distraction as much as possible (cats are permitted).


What is your creative process? Do you plan pieces out or let them happen as they come?
I tend toward a decided lack of planning, which is feasible for short pieces, whether poems or short stories. When I work on longer pieces, I don't plan them per se, but I think about them between writing sessions. This includes pondering narrative arcs and thinking about what moments I would like to include. My longest project ("The Sign of the Dragon," almost 600 pages) was written out of sequence, though the final version is presented conventionally in chronological order. While writing, I moved back and forth through the life of the central character, and also shifted between dozens of different point-of-views.


What is your favorite vice? What are you drinking at happy hour, in a literal or a metaphorical sense?
Reading gay fantasy, though I don't really consider it a vice. So perhaps: reading gay fantasy and later not admitting how very much I enjoyed it.... Drinking: ribena, tea, or, if I am feeling wild, coca cola.