Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I grew up in Nuremberg, Germany, and came to the United States first as an exchange student, then attended Georgetown University. To date I have published twelve books, both poetry and prose, and two more are scheduled for publication by February 2022.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My latest book is Kaleidoscope, a book of prose poems, and it was inspired by the intensity and the fragmentation with which the world comes at me as poet and therefore at the third person persona in the poems.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I write a lot, especially notes about the world and my perception of it. Currently I am going through a series of old notebooks and am surprised to discover how much I edit out in memory as either insignificant or alternatively as something I don’t care to remember.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Poet Roland Flint was my first poetry teacher at Georgetown University and therefore tops the list.
Other influential writers: Doris Lessing (especially The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five; Sally Beauman (especially Destiny); Sylvia Plath; Anne Sexton; Mary Oliver; Elizabeth George
What are you working on now?
I’m working on a short story collection called They Didn’t Know What to Say. It is about the general bafflements in the human condition, especially as concerns relationships and related yearnings.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I always promote my books and events on Facebook. I also have a link to my latest book on my email return addresses which comes in particularly helpful when I correspond with authors who submit to my blog “Writing In A Woman’s Voice.”
Do you have any advice for new authors?
I often heard the advice to write for a specific someone as audience. In this day and age, with so many voices competently competing for being heard, I would say pick yourself as number one audience and write about what intrigues you. Spend your life and time on what inspires you.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Paraphrasing George Saunders: It’s not about what you can do, literary acrobatics and such, but how you can make your audience feel.
What are you reading now?
Penelope Lively’s Moon Tiger
What’s next for you as a writer?
I have pretty much dedicated the next year to short stories for my collection in progress, They Didn’t Know What to Say.” I am also looking for creating some more Kaleidoscope prose poems, perhaps for a future collection. I will keep sifting through my own fascinating notebooks from the past for potential discoveries.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Doris Lessing’s The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five; my own Parcival; and two very large blank notebooks.
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