Contributor Spotlight: Jenny Sadre-Orafai
Jenny Sadre-Orafai’s collaborative poems with Anne Champion “Spell for the Girls Who Want Spells” and “For a Bruise” are part of Issue 76 of Bellingham Review. Subscribe or purchase a single issue through our Submittable page here.
What would you like to share with our readers about the work you contributed to the Bellingham Review?
The spell poems Anne and I wrote together were such a special and strange time. I had never written with anyone in the way we wrote together. We had one Google doc that we both contributed to and it was just this outpouring of magic really in the middle of a very hot summer.
I revisit superstition in “For a Bruise” because superstitions have haunted my whole life it seems. I believe in them just like I believe in magic and spells.
Tell us about your writing life.
I’ve been writing “seriously” (whatever they may mean) since high school. I think I keep writing because I’m interested in making sense of landscapes, people, and moments I encounter. The body frequently appears in my poetry, creative non-fiction, and now my fiction. I think animals are also pretty important to me because they don’t communicate in ways most of us understand.
Which non-writing aspect(s) of your life most influences your writing?
Definitely places and experiences. Traveling is what inspires me most, though.
What writing advice has stayed with you?
To keep going no matter what.
What is your favorite book (or essay, poem, short story)? Favorite writer(s)?
The last novel I read that I love so much is Emily Ruskovich’s Idaho. I will forever love Leni Zumas, Roxane Gay, Edwidge Danticat, Jenny Offill, Donna Tartt, Sarah Manguso, and Nicole Sealey.
What are you reading right now?
Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties.
What project(s) are you working on now, or next?
A collection of prose poems.
Anything else our readers might want to know about you?
I’m a Gemini and an INFJ.
Where can our readers connect with you online?
www.jennysadre-orafai.com
Twitter: @jennys_o
JENNY SADRE-ORAFAI is the author of Malak, Paper, Cotton, Leather, and five chapbooks. Book of Levitations, her poetry collection with Anne Champion, is forthcoming from Trembling Pillow Press in 2019. Recent poetry appears in Cream City Review, Ninth Letter, The Cortland Review, and Hotel Amerika. Recent prose appears in Fourteen Hills and The Collagist. She is co-founding editor of Josephine Quarterly, Professor of English at Kennesaw State University, and Executive Director of Georgia Writers Association.
Featured Image: “Crystal Ball Sunset” by Sherri Yezbick-Taylor