Tell us a little about your experience at UC Clermont: What was your major, and what year did you graduate?   

I started UC Clermont with an education focused major—with my goal being UC main later on. I graduated UC in June 2011 with a bachelor’s degree in English.  

Would you share a positive experience you had at UC Clermont?   

I always felt a deep connection with my teachers—like they really did care more about us as students and not the politics that you can sometimes get from a larger university.  

 

How was your experience being an editor for East Fork? Did it impact your creative works?  

It was wonderful—I started as the poetry editor and then became the head editor back in 2010. The opportunity to read other artists works and expand my knowledge really helped me grow as a writer and a person. It gave me a window into other people’s worlds. I truly enjoyed my time there until I had to move on when I transferred to the Cincinnati campus.  

 

Would you tell me about the work you published at East Fork? (What is your creative process – do you see an evolution in your writing?)   

Most of the time my writing comes from random bursts of emotive thought I’ll have from time to time—either reflecting a lot on my childhood growing up in rural south eastern Ohio—or some of the more difficult moments in my life that I can express better in my writing rather than speaking about it outright. Over time—I feel my style has become dependent on an image based method. I really want people to see and feel what I felt during the writing process. Sometimes I use words that are not normally used to describe that image with the intent to help the reader feel a certain way while reading. I want to somehow take those days when you’re a child sitting on your porch on a Sunday evening and the sun is just setting and your cheek gets caught in that last warm ray of sunlight—and your child self just wants to keep it there. That’s kinda what I’m trying to capture in words. I feel like it has evolved with me as much as I have evolved—you have to let yourself kind of bounce off the proverbial riverbed of life so you can morph into what you’re supposed to be as a writer. My writing morphs right along with me.