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 art from Amanda Yskamp.


What was the inspiration for the piece published in the issue?
When I sit down to work on my collages, I endeavor to disengage my more logical faculties and allow myself to "play" with the images I've cut and assembled. This assemblage (made of both a 2-D image and an earring) came together as I sought to echo the pictorial depiction of cell division.


Who are some of your favorite artists, and what do you like about them?
Photographers: Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, Dorothea Lange, Vivian Maier (!) -- I love them all for their vision, for being where it's happening, for speaking up for the street and the freak.
Poets:  Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman,  Rainer Maria Rilke, Pablo Neruda, Wislawa Szymborska, Mary Oliver, Elizabeth Bishop, Bob Hicok, Matthew Zapruder, so many more. Each poet allows us to live beyond our one life, offering us insights and reckoning, showing us how language can be used to capture both lived experience and the workings within.


What is your #1 advice for other artists?
Prioritize your creativity. If it means leaving the floor unswept, the clothes unfolded, the leaves unraked, do it anyway.


What do you do in the rest of your life and how does that connect and/or conflict with your creative life?
I am a teacher in a small river community. I hope to inspire students, asking in many ways and none so beautiful as Mary Oliver's query, ""Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"


We think of "after happy hour" as the time you can really let loose and be yourself. What is your after happy hour?
I try to make all my hours happy hours, as much as possible given the dismal state of our country. Art for me is absolutely an antidote to anxiety. What happens after each happy hour? I strive for an even happier hour, knowing that most of what I find to do is a form of escape. It is reassuring to recognize that there are many other artists and writers out there also raging against the dying of the light.