Tiphanie Yanique

How did you become a writer?

I have always loved books. My mother and grandmother were librarians. So, wanting to engage with literature was always part of my life. 

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).

I had supportive teachers  in high school, college and graduate school. I do think that all artists need mentors. There is no such thing as doing something socially meaningful without other people in the mix. The writers who are most my literary influences are Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jamaica Kincaid. 

When and where do you write?

Anywhere. Anytime. I have three children and a demanding job. I don’t make the writing precious.  

What are you working on now?

A collection of essays about joy. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

No. I am usually working on multiple projects. If I can’t motivate myself for one project, I will just switch to another. And if I can’t motivate to write at all, then I will go do something else with my life—hang with my family and friends. Read.  Live and love. That can be it’s own inspiration. 

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

Don’t write if you hate writing. This is art. You don’t HAVE to do it. It likely won’t make you much money anyway. 

What’s your advice to new writers? 

Hah. See above. 

Tiphanie Yanique is a novelist, poet, essayist and short story writer. She is the author of the poetry collection, Wife, which won the 2016 Bocas Prize in Caribbean poetry and the United Kingdom’s 2016 Forward/Felix Dennis Prize for a First Collection. Tiphanie is also the author of the novel, Land of Love and Drowning, which won the 2014 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Award from the Center for Fiction, the Phillis Wheatley Award for Pan-African Literature, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Family Foundation Award, and was listed by NPR as one of the Best Books of 2014. Land of Love and Drowning was also a finalist for the Orion Award in Environmental Literature and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. She is the author of a collection of stories, How to Escape from a Leper Colony, which won her a listing as one of the National Book Foundation's 5Under35. Her writing has won the Bocas Award for Caribbean Fiction, the Boston Review Prize in Fiction, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, a Pushcart Prize, a Fulbright Scholarship and an Academy of American Poet's Prize. She has been listed by the Boston Globe as one of the sixteen cultural figures to watch out for and her writing has been published in the New York Times, Best African American Fiction, The Wall Street Journal, American Short Fiction and other places.