1. What is your idea of perfect happiness? Completing my last proof of my manuscript and submitting it for approval.
  2. What is your greatest fear? Finding typos in my work after publishing it.
  3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? Not being confident enough in my work.
  4. What is the trait you most deplore in others? When other writers are not confident in their work or tell themselves they cannot do it.
  5. Which living person do you most admire? I admire Rupi Kaur’s work ethic because she began as a self-published author and is now a New York Times Best Selling author.
  6. What is your greatest extravagance? As an author, my greatest extravagance is Adobe Creative Cloud––specifically, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.
  7. What is your current state of mind? I have writer’s block.
  8. On what occasion do you lie? When I say that I love writing, I sometimes feel like that can be a lie. Sometimes I get so frustrated when writing! It can make me angry and sad. It’s not always a simple and easy process.
  9. Which words or phrases do you most overuse? “Maybe a walk will help.” Or, “Maybe I just need coffee.”
  10. What or who is the greatest love of your life? Reading and writing (also animals/nature).
  11. When and where were you happiest? When I saw and held my self-published book for the first time. Runner up would be when I saw it on a shelf in a bookstore for the first time!
  12. Which talent would you most like to have? I would love to have the talent of realizing when it’s time to stop editing a poem or piece of writing and just be happy with it.
  13. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? I would make myself less anxious about my writing and as a person.
  14. What do you consider your greatest achievement? I consider my first self-published poetry collection my greatest achievement because I put the most work into that project than I have anything else my entire life. I am proud because of my hard work and the book’s success––it has sold over 25,000 copies worldwide.
  15. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be? I would say I’d come back as a butterfly or dragonfly. I have always had a connection to both growing up, and I think their symbol has played a big part in who I am now. I have written several poems about both.
  16. Where would you most like to live? I would love to take inspiration from my favorite poet, Mary Oliver, and live somewhere filled with nature (possibly by a beach or lake).  
  17. What is your most treasured possession? My most treasured possession would have to be my poetry collections and the several filled notebooks given to me by my family.
  18. What is your favorite occupation? Magazine writing.
  19. What is your most marked characteristic? I am a writer!
  20. What do you most value in your friends? Loyalty and honesty. Someone who doesn’t mind giving me some constructive criticism.
  21. Who are your favorite writers? Mary Oliver and Raymond Carver are two of my favorites as of right now.
  22. Who is your favorite hero of fiction? Jo March from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.
  23. Which historical figure do you most identify with? I most identify with Emily Dickinson (we even share a name!).
  24. Who are your heroes in real life? The women in my family.
  25. What are your favorite names? I am putting a twist on this question and answering some of my favorite names from novels or poems I’ve read: Jo March from Little Women, Esther Greenwood from The Bell Jar, Beverly Marsh from It, Annabel Lee, a poem by Edgar Allan Poe, Alice from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
  26. What is it that you most dislike? I most dislike feeling unsure about myself and my work and overthinking.
  27. What is your greatest regret? My greatest regret would be putting off writing a third collection of poems.
  28. What is your motto?

I wouldn’t say I have a motto that I live by, but I do enjoy the first few lines of Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese”:

“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” – Mary Oliver