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.

Abby L. Vandiver

How did you become a writer?

I used to be a lawyer, I became ill and needed something to do other than lie in bed and worry about what was wrong with me, so I started writing. And then I just stuck with it after I got better. 

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

I don't have any writing influences. I learned I wrote well when I was in college and never thought of it as being a career. I just happened upon it (or perhaps it happened upon me).

When and where do you write?

My favorite spot to write is at a desk, and probably on a desktop. My favorite and most productive time to write is mornings. But I do write anywhere and anytime and on anything. Laptops, the back of envelopes and receipts, in notebooks. I'm not picky.

What are you working on now?

I am writing a cozy, editing a women's fiction and plotting out a domestic mystery.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I don't believe in writer's block, so no. There are times I get stuck on how my story should go. As creatives, I think writers always have a story in their heads, so how could we be stuck?

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

You can't edit your own work!

What’s your advice to new writers?

Finish your WIP (and don't take seven years to do it!)

Abby L. Vandiver, also writing as Abby Collette, is a hybrid author who has penned more than twenty-five books and short stories. She has hit both the Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller lists. As Abby Collette she is the author of the Ice Cream Parlor mystery series, about a millennial MBA-holding granddaughter running a family-owned ice cream shop in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, and the Books & Biscuits mystery series. The first book, starring a set of fraternal twins who reunite and open a bookstore and soul food café, is called Body and Soul Food. Writing as Abby L. Vandiver, she is the author of the Logan Dickerson Mysteries, featuring a second-generation archaeologist and a nonagenarian, as well as the Romaine Wilder Mysteries, pairing an East Texas medical examiner and her feisty, funeral-home-owning auntie as sleuths. Abby spends her time writing, facilitating writing workshops at local libraries and hanging out with her grandchildren, each of whom are her favorite.

Hanna Halperin

How did you become a writer?

I’ve been writing stories since I was a kid. I would make up extra chapters of the books that I was reading in school and then I started making up my own. I took as many writing classes as I could because it was the thing I was most excited about. After college I took a few workshops with Sackett Street Writers Workshop and that’s when I learned about MFA programs. I got fixated on wanting to do one. At Wisconsin I wrote more in a relatively short time period than I ever had before, and I loved it. I felt really lucky to be writing and talking about books all the time. I’m always happiest when I’m in the middle of a draft. Since then I’ve been working and writing and it’s a balance that works for me. 

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

Mary Gaitskill, Deborah Eisenberg, Jhumpa Lahiri, Joan Silber, Lorrie Moore. I used to read a lot of The Best American Short Story collections and fall in love with stories—then authors—that way. Every time I read a book and am struck by it, I feel like it influences me or encourages me or gives me a sort of permission I didn’t even realize I was waiting for. I don’t know if that will ever stop and I hope it doesn’t. A few of those books in the past few years have been A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell and Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan. 

When and where do you write?

Before the pandemic I worked a lot in coffee shops. Now I mostly work in my apartment, either at my desk or on my couch. When I’m really engrossed in a project, I write all day, but mornings are always most productive. I work part-time so I don’t write on the days I’m working or teaching. I usually spend a good part of my weekends writing.

What are you working on now?

I’m editing my second novel. I would describe it as a portrait of a relationship having to do with addiction and codependence and obsession. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

I go through periods—sometimes long ones—where I’m not writing anything but I don’t think of it as writer’s block. I’m soaking things in and reading and living. What inevitably happens is that I’ll return to writing sooner or later, and it’s always exciting when I do. 

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

Different advice hits differently at different times, I think. Most recently: Stay off social media. 

What’s your advice to new writers? 

If it’s feeling weird or vulnerable or scary to write it, keep going! There are certain things that only you can write—try writing those things. Strangely enough, those will be the parts that resonate with someone else. 

Hanna Halperin is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her stories have been published in The Kenyon Review, n+1, New Ohio Review, Joyland, and others. She teaches fiction workshops at GrubStreet in Boston and works as a domestic violence counselor. Something Wild is her debut novel out now from Viking.