Cover Photo: "So if I am a tender writer... then my poems should be everything that I am." by Leah Johnson
 

"So if I am a tender writer... then my poems should be everything that I am."

Leah Johnson interviews poet and classes instructor Angel Nafis on community, process, and writing in and outside of an MFA. (Even though advice is whack.)

Wow. I don’t know that I do. What does “cultivating community in writing” mean?

People who are like “This is all I fucking think about.”

And I think that kind of turned me out in some ways. And it was very rigorous. In my mind, when you reach a certain level of rigor, it’s sort of hard to turn that off. It’s hard to unring that bell. It’s like anytime someone gets me talking a little, it’s like I turn to finals week insanity. It’s like a shark smelling blood. And I think that’s what the program did. I smell blood in the water when someone brings up—

Leah Johnson is a 2021 Lambda Literary Emerging Writers Fellow whose work has been published in BuzzFeed, Cosmo, Catapult, and Teen Vogue among others. Her debut YA novel, YOU SHOULD SEE ME IN A CROWN was the inaugural Reese's Book Club YA pick and named a best book of the year by Marie Claire, Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly. Her sophomore novel, RISE TO THE SUN, is due out in 2021.