Category Archives: Daily Musings

Caribbean Literature, Daily Musings

Marion Bethel, Bahamian Poet: Caribbean Sensibilities

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Marion Bethel was born and lives in Nassau, The Bahamas. She read law at Cambridge University, England and has worked as an attorney since 1986. She has two collections of poems and is currently working on a third manuscript of poetry and a novel. In 2012, she produced and directed the documentary Womanish Ways: Freedom, Human Rights & Democracy, the Women’s Suffrage Movement in The Bahamas 1948 to 1962, a documentary on the struggle to gain women the right to vote in the Bahamas.

 OPA: You are an attorney, a poet, and a mother. Have you always written?

MB: I started writing seriously in 1986 during the final year of my Bar examinations.  I deferred my Bar exams in order to spend a full summer writing poetry.   During this period I wrote the draft of Guanahani, My Love, my first poetry collection.

OPA: How does the job as an attorney feed or distract from your writing?

MB: The time spent as an attorney often feels to be in conflict with time needed for my creative writing process.  On the other hand, I see that there is enough time for me to do my writing if and when I am committed.  I can waste a lot of time procrastinating and getting ready to write instead of just writing.  I really thought that practicing law & the pursuit of justice could satisfy me.  However, I feel closer to & am more coherent with social justice in writing poetry.

OPA: How does motherhood figure into your writing?

MB: While being a parent or mother takes lots of time within any one day, the major part of that time is now behind me as my two daughters are in their twenties.  But yes, when they were young, I felt torn between taking care of them and paying attention to my writing.  It is interesting that both of my poetry books were started and completed when my daughters were still principally in my care.  It may be then that the tension facilitates focus, productivity and attention when I actually sit down to write.

OPA: You have been widely published and recognized in the writing world, what has that journey been like?

MB: It’s been an uneven journey, that is, there have been and continue to be productive and unproductive periods, focussed and unfocussed time.   My expectation of myself is much higher than my actual productivity or production.  It’s been a journey of great gifts to me.  I must give thanks for the opportunity to attend the Caribbean Writers Summer Institute at the University of Miami in 1991 where I attended workshops with George Lamming and Kamau Brathwaite.  Coming out of that experience I worked on Guanahani, My Love. It was so wonderful to be awarded the Casa de Las Americas prize in 1994 for Guanahani, My Love.  I was then invited to participate in the Miami Book Fair.  Further, I have been a guest speaker at several colleges and universities over the years.  In 1996 I was fortunate to gain a fellowship at the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College. This was one of the highlights of my journey where I spent twelve months at Harvard University with 39 other women artists, scientists doing our individual work.  Another highlight was my time at Cave Canem (2007 – 2009) under the direction of Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady. I loved this experience in the company of brilliant young, African American poets who challenged me to sharpen my poetry skills. In 2010 I founded a writer’s institute with Helen Klonaris here in the Bahamas.  This was also a gratifying part of my journey.

OPA: How does your new collection, Bougainvillea Ringplay, differ from your first?

MB:  Guanahani, My Love was the direct result of the poetry workshop with Kamau Brathwaite and my attempt to employ specific poetry forms in the service of telling the history of The Bahamas. Bougainvillea Ringplay was more politically personal.  In BR I felt infinitely more confident both in technique & content to explore different forms and subject matter.  There was tremendous growth in BR.  The poetic voice is sharper, bolder.  The poetic imagination is more expansive.

OPA: Of course this poem is as much about the characteristics of the bougainvillea plant/flower, personified as a girl, as it is about a girl/woman who is as tenacious as the plant. Can you talk about the stance in this poem, and the parallels you are drawing about the rootedness as well as resistance and determination evident in Caribbean people?

MB:  The poem, BR, really evokes for me childhood memories of fluidity, wild abandonment, freedom even in the face of overwhelming restrictions in regard to colonial education & curriculum, church traditions, family and social expectations.  This freedom came ironically in the school yard where we played ring play games every day in between the rigidity of learning and supervised behaviour.  Bougainvillaea were everywhere from the time I left home in the morning en route to school and church.  The colours and the expression of the bougainvillea evoke for me the resilient spirit of childhood that transforms and matures into the spirit of young womanhood.  It is rooted, affirmative, resistant and eternal.

OPA:  In the bougainvillea tree, I catch a glimpse of freedom, physical, emotional, mental & spiritual. This is the beauty of the Caribbean spirit at its best in music, dance, and poetry. Is it important that Caribbean writers use local imagery, fauna, flora, culture?

MB: Yes, I think it’s imperative that I use Caribbean local imagery, fauna, flora.  The physical world has shaped our sensibility and spirituality and we have humanized our physical world.  At some point in our existence we are one, i.e., the physical and human environment.  I affirm the Caribbean presence in the use off Caribbean imagery.

OPA: The belief is, the more you do something, in this instance writing, the more proficient or better you become. Can you chart your development as a poet? Do you see the growth in this collection, and if so in what ways?

MB:  This poem felt so me, integrally me. And a me that I would hope is so Bahmian, so Caribbean and so whole.  I felt entirely connected to my centre, my self and ultimately my universe when I was writing this poem.  This poem is the one from which all the other poems pivot.  The other poems are in dialogue with BR in regard to authenticity of expression and their reach for freedom.

OPA: As a child growing up, we played ring games, I don’t know if that happens so much these days. What was your process of writing this collection?

MB: The poems in BR were written over a period of 10 years.  My attention was divided between my family, work and political activism in civil society in The Bahamas.  My best work was done under great discipline i.e., getting up at 4a.m. & writing before going to work. I know the best productive process is to write every day.  I have not always followed this

OPA: I read this poem in Spain, and it was translated, but at the end of my presentation a few of the participants asked me what is ringplay? How would you explain it to a non-Caribbean audience?

MB:  Ringplay is a childhood game of dance, song and drama that is performed in a circle.  One person jumps into the ring & shows her bodily rhythm, sensuality and sexual energy in dance while the circle claps & sings her on sometimes to the point of a frenzy.  Ringplay may have religious origins in African spirituality.

Bougainvillea ringplay front cover copy

http://www.peepaltreepress.com

 

BOUGAINVILLAEA RINGPLAY

By Marion Bethel

 this me right here inside the ring

in March April May springing

from concrete tar sand parading

passion purple ungodly colours waving

cores of pink cream orange showing

my motion to you unsolicited

in months of dry rain sighing

ring centre I come to you straight

shaping vision beyond sugar-in-a-plum

winding my waist tight in your face

clinging to your fence I aint shame

mounting it from rock and gravel

unhedged hips fall and rise

spreading limbs all over your wall

 

this me now right here outside the ring

even in June July August fixing

to catch the colours of your dream playing

biggety with your emotion working

up myself round edges of islands cascading

even when poinciana throw bloodclots unconsoled

in full seagreen I just keep on coming

 

jumping back in the ring I aint shiftin for no one

limboing under the shade of a dilly tree

climbing up womantongue and guinep

wrapping arms around cerosee vine

rushing to inventions of a lonesome conchshell

fixed by tongue-tied conga drums

spinning we move in circles driven shaken freed

 

 

 

Caribbean Literature, Daily Musings, poetry/prose

Thar She Blows: Nancy Anne Miller’s Star Map

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OPA: Nancy, in this your 5th collection of poetry, do you notice any changes in your poetic, and if so in what ways?

AM: This particular collection is one written over a period of decades, poems I’ve been writing while living in Northwestern CT as a response to the seasons, thus there is a variance in voice and tone.

The earlier work is more about capturing an image, exploring it without a narrative. The poem “Sticky” is a good example of that. Of late, my work is more voice driven. I unpack the image metaphors more and incorporate them in a going narrative as in “Let’s Not Pretend.” This makes the poems less stiff and opens up the reach of the metaphors. They perform their duties more completely in the thrust of a story.

OPA: Are you a stargazer, and does the constellation affect you work?

NAM: Not at all, and I’m not even a horoscope girl although I came to America in the 60’s. However, I am always thinking of my sea captain ancestors out on the sea with the stars overhead to guide them. It is a permanent archetype in my psyche, one I am strengthened by.

OPA: This new collection is entitled, Star Map, how did you arrive at this title?

NAM: The book is about my interpretation of the seasons as a Bermudian, seeing my environs from the perspective of an islander. My writing about such is a way to locate myself, place my body in the landscape.

I had a grandfather who traveled a lot and kept a log of his everyday life much like former sea captains in my lineage. He sent these diaries around to the entire family. I think of my writing poems as keeping a log of sorts, as a place I locate my being like one might out at sea. The star map metaphor comes from the line “The frost on my windshield with/ connecting white stellar shapes/ is a star map to guide me.”  Yes! To guide me in a new country, to guide my journey in my car (Such an American metaphor for being!), and to announce that my poems are the maps that make my journey happen, possible.

OPA: The last line of the title poem intrigues me, “its slit eye, a tongue slips through, speaks.”  It’s vivid, revealing, yet mysterious. I am curious about the tongue that slips through and manages to speak. Sounds like a coup. Can you speak about the trajectory of this poem?

NAM: A coup is a good word here. I had to learn to speak about the loss of my island as when I first came to America the transition was an invisible one. I did not have to learn a new language for instance, and Bermuda was a known to the community I moved into. However, that knowledge was in a skewed context. It was the knowledge of a privileged tourist destination that postcolonial writers, myself included, write against.

There was no concept of the backstory of slavery in that perception, nor an awareness of the true complexities of colonial life because of the silence around my home country caused by a lack of island literature to bear witness to it. Thus, people would often say to me “I didn’t know anyone came from Bermuda.” It was such a dislocated and trivialized place in their minds –one that existed only for touristic exploitations by consumers. So when I began to write about Bermuda there was a lot to write against and for. And like many writers what I had to say, put down in poems was sometimes uncomfortable for my longstanding family there. In that sense I must say writing in exile from afar had its advantages.

OPA: The poems are primarily about winter and snow, with a few scant references to you home, Bermuda.  What is the setting, and where does Bermuda reside in these poems, in your life away from Bermuda?

NAM: Bermuda is my North Star. The location all other locations are seen from. The Bermuda landscape is inside me. The New England landscape is outside of me, although my poems have mapped my way into it. Thus I, of course, see the bucolic environment around me through a semitropical one, and hence a comparison is always present. I’m employing contrast by what Coleridge referred to as “the likeness within the unlikeness.”

As a poet, I generally think of writing about the seasons as comparable to life drawing. It is a really good place to improve one’s skill as nature is so immense and already very daunting to approach. And in the case when I’m writing about Bermuda as a direct subject, winter itself provides a vacuum for memory, creates an almost sublime aesthetic distance, a removal from the lush island life which hones one’s skill to recall it, bring it back into being. Exile has its perks.

OPA: Is poetry your first and primary medium?

Yes! Although painting orders my mind and there is a way that my Semitropical Paint Huts bring the island environment stateside. Keeps it close so that it facilitates my writing poems about Bermuda. My poetic language is highly visual because photography taught me to observe the world, and painting to physically embody it. Both inform how I take it in and write about it.

OPA: How do you know when the poem is done?

When it is satisfying enough in carrying a narrative, an observation and also when the formal aspects of it, tone, diction, imagery, are doing the best job they can and are” bringing things together into a unity which is original, interesting and fruitful” to quote Schwartz.” The judgement that it is good enough, happens on an intuitive level when I am mostly satisfied, and hence can let it go.

I am an advocate for sending poems out because that final read before you send poems off to another editor will make you really hone the poem in the manner Wilde describes as “spending the morning putting the comma in the paragraph, and then spending the afternoon taking it out.”

OPA: Which of the senses would you say is strongest or more dominant in this collection?

NAM: I would definitely say the visual as I start poems from image metaphors that I log in my notebook. The sense of sight carries the weight of the poem. It is the cell that Rilke speaks of when he says: “Somehow I too must discover the smallest constituent element, the cell of my art, the tangible immaterial means of expressing everything.”

OPA: The poem, “Summer’s Beggars,” has a nostalgic tone, walking on the beach, collecting shells, idle and idyllic. But life is never that simple or is it?

Summer’s Beggar

It all points to going to the ocean at the end

of the season where wave by wave summer

is covered, buried taken into the deep. Shells

are scattered at the edge of the tide, loose

change falling out of the rim of a skirt

for me to pick up, summer’s beggar. I will

bring a large conch back, itself a whirl,

a turning. Place it on my shelf to stay still,

slow. A snail crawls endlessly through winter.

If it was that simple, there would be less art in the world!

 

NAM: To quote Cernuda: “The poet tries to fix the transitory spectacle that he perceives. Each day, every minute, the urge to arrest the course of life falls upon him, a course so full at times it would seem to merit an eternal continuation. “In “Summer’s Beggar” the collecting of shells, the hoarding of that which held something as the shell itself is imprinted with what it contained, all of this is a metaphor for writing poems, collecting the imprint of the world in language. The conch in my work (ever since my first chapbook titled Conch), is a container for the voice of the subconscious (i.e the ocean.) So bringing the conch back is bringing back the voice for my work which unfolds, unravels, spins, yields slowly through the absence of place as Simone Weil notes when she states: “We must be rooted in the absence of a place. We must take the feeling of being at home into exile.”

OPA: Are you currently working on a new collection?

NAM: I am sending around a collection to publishers titled Island Bound Mail with some interest so far. I am beginning to start another collection titled Boiling Hot. So yes, I am busy and am forever aware of what Eliot implied when he said: every attempt/ Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure/ because one has learnt to get the better of words/ For the one thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which/ One is no longer disposed to say it.

https://www.amazon.com/author/nancyannemillerpoet

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Books for Youth, Daily Musings, St Croix/Virgin Islands Culture, Visioning/Future Plans

B is for Benye, a VI Book from New Writer

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PembertonPhoto_72dpiCharlene Pemberton, is a retired teacher who taught for 30 years in St Croix, at the middle school and high school level. Although she hails from St Thomas, her place of birth, St Croix is now her home, where she has just launched, her first book, but most certainly not her last.

Teacher Pemberton worked for seven years researching and editing this ABC text that is not a primer. “After writing it, I left it on my desk for years until my daughter pushed and propelled me to publish it, October, 2015.”   Similar to many established and emerging writer, Pemberton’s process begins with brainstorming. She adds, “Then I write continuously without correcting errors. Usually, I put my writing away for a day or two and begin with a fresh eye. Here is when I complete my revising and editing.   Also, writing and reading groups offered ideas and encouragement throughout the process.”

The kernel for this book began many years ago as Charlene narrates its impetus. “One day I brought benye treats for my high school English classes.  To my surprise, this local name was unfamiliar to them.  However, after tasting the treats, the class responded saying, “We’ve had this before. But we just didn’t know the name.” Pemberton asserts that it was this event that “planted the seed for my cultural book that informs, and at the same time it highlights culture.  I dedicated my book to my grandson because I want him to know about his culture and to pass it on to future generations.”

Donning the roles of teacher, mother and grandmother contributed enormously to the writing of the book, Charlene Pemberton notes.  Even though her targeted audiences are middle school students and their parents and teachers, the book is also for visitors to the US Virgin Islands.  “These groups, I believe, would appreciate the essence of our culture and history.” Reflecting more, Charlene adds, “I would like my book to reach different cultures.  Virgin Islanders have a unique heritage and through my books I hope to share my culture with the world.”
Inspired by her community, Pemberton pays homage to the late Crucian poet, Marvin Williams, whom she knew.  “One of his [Williams] first published poems is my favorite.  I believe it was about Milo and the Kings, a musical icon on the island of St Thomas. I loved this particular poem because it depicted Virgin Islands musical pride.”

Be is for Benye is the first of many to come. Charlene Pemberton is currently researching Virgin Islanders “who were members of the Tuskegee Airmen.  This type of information is usually not found in history books.” Like so much of the Virgin Islands rich history that has been omitted, Charlene Pemberton believes firmly that the history and culture “must be written about and celebrated by its own so our children and future generation will know the foundation of their culture.

Support local writers such as Charlene Pemberton by buying her book, and insist that local schools purchase copies. In additiona, by purchasing and sending copies for family and friends who live abroad, as well as the children who are here, you help to support the continuity of the culture.

Happy that her book is finally out, Charlene Pemberton says, “I would like to give a warm Virgin Islands shout out to all my former students!”

Below is an excerpt from B is for Benye.

B is for Benye: A Virgin Islands Historical and Cultural A-Z Book begins with a Virgin Islands family, the Penns, living In Orlando Florida. The grandparents, Clarice and Vincent, who live on the island of St. Croix, want to pass down and share their Virgin Islands heritage with their grandchildren, Madelyn and Joah who have visited St. Croix only one time. So, both grandparents decided to send the children a very special present.

Can you guess what present the Penns sent their grandchildren?

Well, come along and find out.

Cover

Available at stores in St Croix and St Thomas

Daily Musings, Finding the Answers, Inspirational

The Rain of Life

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IMG_0986 We depend on rain for our water supply.

We depend on oxygen to breathe.

We depend on day to work and play.

We depend on night to rest and sleep.

We do not create or have anything to do with any of these so called “natural” phenomena.

More often than not we take them for granted.

What or who else are you taking for granted in your life?

Where are you just showing up and receiving blessings without giving something in return?

In order to have water all the time, even when we go for periods without rains, we have to built dams and wells and cisterns.

We accept the oxygen by breathing, and some of us practice deep breathing as we have learnt that this habit expands our lungs and helps the oxygen to circulate more fully throughout our bodies.

Similarly, with the day and night, we have learnt how to harness and maximize both times, and the benefits and necessity of each for us.

So it is not really true that the good things in life are free.  Nothing is free.  Everything requires our conscious or unconscious reciprocal energy.

Therefore, if you want rain in your life, make sure you have a container to store it, and you plan for its uses so you will always have water when you need it.

Think about all the people and the plant and animal life throughout the world who die from lack of water.  Pause now and send them a drop of daily rain. You and your thoughts are that powerful.

Daily Musings, Inspirational, Visioning/Future Plans

The Island of Your Mind

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FullSizeRenderSome of us live on islands and for us these islands are the world, as big as the African continent, the 2nd largest, but depicted inaccurately on most maps to look smaller.

Some people dream of owning an island, while others have purchased islands for their own private resorts or play ground.

Each of us possess an island, also known as your mind, and as such, you  get to decide what you allow in and out.

As you begin a new year, honor and protect your mind by being mindful of what you eat, who you associate with,  what information you allow to enter, and most importantly the thoughts you allow to linger and upon which you ponder.

No need to enter a race if you decide in advance that you cannot win.  Similarly, whatever thoughts and ideas you feed to your mind will grow. Plants flowers and fruits on your island, not weeds and despair.

My island is 360 degree of positive inspiration and creativity.

Daily Musings, Inspirational

Get Busy Living the Life You Want

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FullSizeRender All too often I hear people making all kinds of excuses about why they are not living the life they want, why what they want is not impossible or they have to wait until the time is right.

Toss excuses into the garbage.  If you want it and think it then it is possible. The time is now. The time is right, if you make it so.

Live your life fully today. Take baby steps towards your goals. Love every moment of every day.  Don’t sweat the small things.  Forgive people’s haste and ignorance.  Be bigger than the small minded.

When I wake up and look out at this beautiful environment that nurtures and protects me, I know I am on the right path and my life is unfolding like a glorious sun-flower.

Joy and gratitude are the stepping stones to achieving your goals.

Daily Musings

Our Pot of Gold

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IMG_0556.JPGOur lives are precious and invaluable, and there is so much more that we each can do for ourselves as well as for others.

Forget about old hurts and grudges.  Give them to the earth to be transformed into compost.

Banish the naysayers from your head.

There is really nothing you cannot do.  If you think or dream it, it is possible.

Welcome the builders and cheers in your life.  Welcome those who say yes to your projects and those who say I have an idea how you can achieve them, let me help you. Say yes to help and assistance it is a form of strength.

Welcome community because it is really true that it takes a team to make many amazing projects happen.

Call up an old relative or a friend and apologize even though you are sure you were not the one who caused the infraction.

Promise to do something small daily for the world, and that might just be to do you to the best of your ability and smile and applaud yourself.

The world needs our love.  The world feeds on our joy.  The world rejoices about our creativity.  The world really, truly says yes to you just as you are.

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Here!  Let’s share this pot of gold.

 

Daily Musings

The Best Is Now

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IMG_0494 Today, right now is the perfect time to contemplate where you are, where you want to go, and acknowledge that your life is good and getting better minute by minute because you are paying attention and getting rid of everyone and everything that do not serve you and/or detract you from being and living your highest and best self.

How glorious you are.  How awesome is your life. How blessed is this life, the only one you know…

Daily Musings

Natalie Baszile: Blazing with her debut novel, Queen Sugar

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An Interview with Opal Palmer Adisa

 Natalie Baszile is the author of the debut novel, Queen Sugar, soon to be adapted into a TV series by writer/director, Ava DuVernay of “Selma” fame, and co-produced by Oprah Winfrey for OWN, Winfrey’s cable network. Queen Sugar was named one of the San Francisco Chronicles’ Best Books of 2014, was long-listed for the Crooks Corner Southern Book Prize, and nominated for an NAACP Image Award.

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OPA: When did you know you had a novel in you?

NB:     I began to suspect I had a novel in me when I realized a short story I’d written was actually just part of a larger story.  This was 1997 and I was at my grandmother’s funeral in Louisiana. During the service, it occurred to me that her town was the place from where one of my characters had come.  It was a startling realization, but also a relief.  When I got home from the funeral, I pulled out the short story and started imagining the characters’ lives. The novel grew from there.

OPA: What education/life experiences prepared you to write this novel? And how long did it take?

NB:     Queen Sugar took 11 years to write, and I have to say that everything I did in advance of selling the manuscript prepared me  to write it.  I was an English major as an undergraduate at Berkeley. That’s where I was first introduced to and fell in love with Afro-American Literature. Afro-American literature was experiencing a renaissance of sorts. Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor were just a few of the black authors who were all publishing books and I was completely inspired by their work.  That’s when I started to thinking I might want to be a writer.  I earned a M.A. in Afro-American Studies, and that experience depended my appreciation, not just for Afro-American literature, but for the history the diaspora.  Those two experiences helped me lay the foundation.  Years later, after I’d started working on Queen Sugar, I went back to school again and earned an M.F.A. in Creative Writing because I realized I needed to learn more about the craft of writing.  I also worked for my family’s business for eleven years after college. While that experience didn’t teach me anything about writing, I learned some valuable lessons about how quickly time could pass and how important it was for me to pursue my passion while I had the chance.

OPA: Did you always know you wanted to write?

NB:     I always knew I wanted to write.  I loved books as a kid, and initially thought I wanted to be a journalist. During college I secretly dreamed of moving to New York and writing for a magazine, but I was afraid to take the leap, which, looking back seems so ridiculous. But I’d also promised my dad that after graduation I’d work in his business.  I’m the oldest of two girls, and my younger sister announced early on that she wanted to be an academic, so I suppose I felt a sense of duty–so that’s what I did for 11 years until I couldn’t stand it any more and quit.  Writing is something I have to do. It’s an absolute necessity–physically, emotionally, and psychologically, spiritually. When I don’t write, I don’t really feel like myself.

OPA: Your novel, Queen Sugar, is set in Louisiana.  Did you grow up there or do you have family there?

NB:     I’m a native Californian, but my dad was born in Louisiana, which, I think, gave me permission to claim it as part of my identity. My extended family still lives there, and I love having southern roots, but I’m also grateful to have a western sensibility.  I don’t think I could have written Queen Sugar if I’d been born in Louisiana.  That book is all about discovery and being in a state of wonder.  In so many ways, I needed to occupy a space outside of the culture in order to write about it.

OPA: Why is this story important to the Black literary tradition?

NB:     When I first dreamed of becoming a writer, African-American literature explored a range of topics, but then it seemed to narrow for a time, which I think had more to do with publishing and less to do with reality. But there was definitely a period when it seemed that the only stories told (or published) about black peoples’ lives were either entirely urban or entirely rural, and I wasn’t seeing anything that reflected my experience on the book shelves.  That lack of range was huge reason why I wanted to write Queen Sugar. Because it’s like Toni Morrison says:  “If you don’t see a book you want to read, then you must write it.”  I always hoped that Queen Sugar would tell a story readers hadn’t seen:  the story of a middle class, suburban black woman from the west.  The Black literary tradition is so rich.  I’m very grateful to be a part of it.

OPA: Which black writers and other writers’ works have influenced you?

NB:     Where do I begin?  James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Zora Neal Hurston and Jean Toomer were some of my early influences. I love Andrea Lee’s story collection, Interesting Women, then there’s Zadie Smith and Chiminanda Adiche.  I don’t write poetry, but I read it and have tremendous admiration for poets: Elizabeth Alexander, A. Van Jordan, Natasha Tretheway, Cornelius Eady, Yusef Komenyakaa, Lucille Clifton . . . .  I just read Claudia Rankine’s Citizen, which blew me away, and am reading Robin Coste Lewis’s Voyage of the Sable Venus, which I love, love love.  I love Amy Bloom and Elizabeth Strout, Michael Cunningham, Elena Ferrante’s,  Anthony Doerr. So many writers . . .I also draw inspiration from other art forms.  Kara Walker’s work is provocative and interesting. Then there’s Glen Ligon, Carrie Mae Weems, Elizabeth Catlett, and Richard Mayhew . . . I could go on.

OPA: Are you willing to say what you’re working on next?

NB:     I have an idea for my next novel, but I’m at the very beginning of the process, which feels so strange after working on Queen Sugar for so long. I have the tiniest seed of an idea, just a kernel, which I have to nurture and protect, so I can’t say much about it.

OPA: What does Natalie do for fun, when she is not writing, let us, just a little, into a glimpse of you – Natalie?

NB:     When I’m not writing, I love to ride my bike and garden, although I have to confess I haven’t done much of either lately. I had a big garden when I lived in Los Angeles, but I still haven’t figured out how to grow anything but salad greens and lemons in San Francisco where it’s so much cooler. I like to entertain and enjoy entertaining friends over for dinner. I love to travel and have a long list of places I’d love to experience. I have a lot of things on my bucket list.

QUEEN SUGAR paperback

Natalie Baszile, a member of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto, has a M.A. in Afro-American Studies from UCLA, and an MFA from Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers. Her non-fiction work has appeared in The Rumpus.net, Mission at Tenth, The Best Women’s Travel Writing Volume 9, and O, The Oprah Magazine. For more information visit her website: http://nataliebaszile.com or connect with her on FaceBook