The PoArtMo Anthology Series: Interview with Anna Sallee

Hello everyone!

Welcome to our PoArtMo Anthology Series, which celebrates the artists whose work appears in The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: 2021 Edition.

Today’s guest is Anna Sallee, who contributed the poem “Junebug” and short story “This Won’t Go Back To Normal (If It Ever Was)” to our anthology.

Auroras & Blossoms: Hello Anna. Congratulations for being a featured artist in our anthology! How does a poem or story begin for you? Does it start with an image, a form, or a particular theme?

Anna: With poetry in particular, it frequently begins when I am feeling extremely sad or extremely angry. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the saying that “your first draft is your barf draft, where you barf it all out” but that’s definitely how 99% of my poems come about. Not so much the poem featured in this anthology – because it’s a happy poem – but that is a commonality in most of my poetry.

As for stories, it changes every time. Sometimes I get one scene in my brain and have to extrapolate the rest of the story before and after that scene, sometimes – like poetry – I get very angry or upset about a certain topic one day and decide to rant about it, via story. It is not exactly the same as poetry, however, because I will continue working on the story, even when I am not in the midst of the anger/sadness. Even when I am happy or tired.

A&B: Tell us all about the inspiration behind “Junebug” & “This Won’t Go Back To Normal (If It Ever Was)”, the pieces of yours that appear in The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: 2021 Edition.

Anna: Thank you for accepting me. This is the first literary publication outside of my college campus that I have been a part of, so it’s an honor.

The inspiration behind the poem “Junebug” was that one day in Advanced Creative Writing class, our teacher assigned us a writing prompt where we wrote a love poem about something that wasn’t a romance. So, I decided to write a love poem about the love between human and cat. Junebug is a real cat, who is very fluffy, and I love her. I’m going to see her this weekend.

The inspiration behind “This Won’t Go Back To Normal (If It Ever Was)” is harder for me to pinpoint. I believe I was thinking of my late friend who I lost when I was sixteen and has stayed in my brain for over a decade since then. She has been inspiration for lots of different works of mine. Unlike the characters in question, I was never in love with my friend and my parents were actually good at listening to my grief. However, she was still the main source of inspiration for the story.

A&B: Who are your biggest influences in the writing/poetry world?

Anna: My answer to this one is always changing, but as of right now I am most inspired by Angie Thomas and C.B. Lee in the realm of fiction and Audre Lorde and Sonia Sanchez in the world of poetry (I just discovered Sanchez’s works last semester and have been in love with them ever since).

A&B: What is your relationship with your speaking voice and your written voice?

Anna: This is an interesting question; one I had not thought of before now. I have been told that I am very good at dialogue in my stories, and I believe that comes from my desire of communication in real life (my “speaking voice”). I have always been very blunt, from a young age, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten better at starting (at times difficult) conversations with my friends and family. I think my love and desire for communication in real life translates well into my dialogue, even dialogue between characters who are bad at communication.

A&B: Has your own opinion or idea of what writing is changed since you first started writing?

Anna: In some ways it has, and in other ways it has not. I always say that I’ve been writing since before I knew how to write; when I was a child, I would draw books and staple them together. I knew what story was being created there, but nobody else who tried to look at the book would know what the story was. The story was always one of fun, usually of princesses and/or magic powers. As a child, then, my idea of writing was to create a fun story for people to enjoy and express my active imagination of what I wanted to be (a princess with superpowers).

I don’t write as much in the Fantasy genre as I did then, but I definitely still want to create a fun story for people to enjoy, to express my imagination and what I want to see in the world. Simultaneously, however, I am now writing about more serious issues and about the world as it is. In that sense, ‘what writing is’ to me has changed from escape from reality to a reflection of reality (but still with a happy ending).

A&B: Does your work have any specific themes or social commentary we should identify with?

Anna: “Junebug” is definitely not social commentary, as its theme is love for cats. “This Won’t Go Back To Normal (If It Ever Was)”, is about suicide, but from the perspective of the one who lived having to grapple with the idea that she can still be happy without her best friend. I was also trying to comment on parents who don’t know, necessarily, how to help their child with such large grief and only know how to help her with her high school GPA.

A&B: Tell us the most positive and uplifting advice you have been given while working as a writer.

Anna: One year when I failed NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and thought about giving up on NaNoWriMo altogether, someone told me, “One failure does not dictate future success.” I have failed NaNoWriMo a lot of times at this point, but there was something about that particular year that made me want to give up completely. However, I didn’t give up. I still continue doing NaNoWriMo every year, even when I know I will probably not reach 50,000 words, and I keep that advice in my head for everything in all the writing I do.

Bio:

Anna Sallee is a Junior at Hollins University, Virginia. She is majoring in both Creative Writing and Gender & Women’s Studies, and hopes to write Young Adult novels afterwards.

Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-sallee-a7b083204

Anna, thank you for answering our questions and supporting Auroras & Blossoms! We know that people will love your writing as much as we do!

Cendrine & David