Age: 31
Hometown: Oriskany Falls, NY
Occupation: Writer, Bartender, Preservice Secondary English Teacher
Top 5 Literary Tomes:
- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Infinite Jest by David foster Wallace
- Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
- Ulysses by James Joyce
- The Iliad by Homer
I noticed your big notebook, tell me more about that…
“Writing for me is an attempt to access my subconscious; I try not to think too much about what I’m writing as I write it. I find that I think too much about what I’m writing when I’m working on a computer so I like to write by hand when I can. I bought that notebook to encourage myself to write by hand more. I spent last summer writing one-two hours a day, trying to write without stopping or worrying about where it was going. I do it because I enjoy it and I have ideas for short stories that I like to get on paper.”
What’s your motivation in writing short stories?
“For one, I’ve always enjoyed writing. I’ve had this idea for a novel in my head for a long time and I wanted to challenge myself to publish something. I use the short stories as a stepping stone. They’re easier to finish than one long novel.”
What are your favorites in the science fiction genre?
“I like a lot of the classics, especially in film, like 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Day the Earth Stood Still, but I also really like new-wave science fiction literature. Some of my favorite authors are Samuel R. Delany, Ursula Le Guin, James Tiptree, and Alfred Bester. Bester, in particular, has a fascinating comic book style of writing and is also really interesting and thought-provoking.”
Writing also follows you into other area like music, right?
“I started playing music around the age of ten. I played guitar for a long time. For five years when I lived in Brooklyn, I was in a rock band called Crawl Babies. I wrote some of the music but for the most part, it was a collaborative effort. We played shows around the city and did a bit of touring outside the city in the Northeast, specifically in Boston, Philly, and Rochester. We recorded two albums but after the second, two of our members moved to Rochester and things kind of ended.”