As a person of color, I know race can't be stripped from admiration or preference.

I recently did a reading at an elementary school in Ottawa, and one of the children asked me if I was a girl. I said yes. Another child commented that I had a deep voice. I responded: "Can girls have deep voices?" There was a pause and then the group responded, "Yes!"

I always work with text orally in the writing process, saying passages aloud to measure flow.

I continue to explore poetry.

I couldn't write about love without writing about hate - specifically, how the experience of hatred embeds itself in the body and prevents love from entering or leaving.

I would love to see more dialogue around the "responsibilities" of art consumers - how can audiences better financially support artists we love, artists who are doing the work, so that artists have a more solid foundation upon which to make art?

Art can sometimes be separate from the artist.