This is Melissa Ford Lucken, Rosalie Petrouske, Susan Serafin-Jess, editors for the Washington Square Review. Washington Square On-Air showcases the poetry and fiction of the latest edition of LCC's literary journal, The Washington Square Review, read by the poets, authors, and editors themselves. Expect the unexpected as our contributors express experience and fantasy with humor, imagination, poetic license, irony, and passion. If you love language at its most original, please join us in our audio Town Square to celebrate a community of writers spanning from around the world to Lansing.

Hey there. This is Melissa Ford Lucken. I'm here with Nomi Hawthorne, who is a graduating creative writing student. She'll be getting her AA in creative writing here at Lansing Community College, and I invited her here just to give us an overview of the program and her place in it. So, Noemi, when you think about our creative writing program here at lcc, what's that experience like for you and how did you get here?

I really loved the creative writing program here at lcc. I didn't originally come to do the creative writing program. I decided that I was going to come and do paraprofessional. And then and I realized that there was a creative writing program. And I've been a creative writer since, well, at least the fourth grade when I made my first book for a young author's program. And I decided that I just really wanted to follow my dream of creative writing. And so that's how I ended up here.

What was the first class you took here? That was a creative writing class, the.

Creative writing one class.

And what was that like?

Oh, I loved that class. I was able to learn so much. And that was really when I started writing poetry again. And I didn't really know that I could write poetry until that point. I had written poetry in high school, but nothing as good or as powerful as what I had written in the Creative writing one class.

I'm really interested in what you said about how you came for paraprofessional and then you found out that there were creative writing classes here. It made me wonder, did you ever think about being a writer? I know you said that you wrote a book, but did you ever think about that was going to be your thing?

I've always wanted to be a writer. I lived in California for a while and I tried to take a creative writing class at UCLA and it ended up getting canceled for very weird reasons. And so I've always known I wanted to be a creative writer. I've always known I wanted to be an author. I just didn't really think I could do it. And this program has shown me that I can talk a little bit more.

About the Creative Writing one class. What were the assignments like? What were the other students like?

Well, it was an online class, so I didn't really interact too much with the other students, but. But it was. And it was a short one because I took it over the summer. So it was a very quick class. And it helped to show us different ways to approach writing. She would give us examples of kind of like what she was looking for. And she would tell us to emulate, not copy, but kind of emulate what the other authors had done, the other poets had done. And so one of my favorite poems I wrote from an assignment about emulating poem on trees, the trees that saw this person's life over time. And I wrote a poem that was the waters that saw my spouses and my relationship. And it actually won third place in the LCC Land Scholarship.

That's beautiful. When did you take the Creative Writing One class?

Summer of 2022.

And then after the Creative Writing One, what was the next class that you took?

The next class I took was the Writing the novel class, which I very much enjoyed. And I'm not just saying that because you were the teacher.

Well, tell us a little bit about what that experience was like, because it sounds like With Creative Writing 1, you were given some fairly specific assignments and asked to really react to something that someone else had written, which is a very common way for all writers to learn. How was that different in the novel writing class?

The novel writing class, you gave us a lot more freedom, a lot more ability to just do what we wanted to do. We had to come up with a synopsis in the first, second, and third chapters. We had these really amazing writing groups where we would workshop with each other. And I got really close with a couple of the other students when we were doing that. I was very, very nervous about that class because it was an on campus class and I'm not exactly a spring chicken, so I'm an older student. I came back after 20 years off from going to school and decided to complete my degree. And so it was. I was very anxious about interacting with students who weren't my same age. But it was actually really eye opening and very fun.

Okay, talk more about that. Talk a little bit about what made it fun.

It was really fun to get to read other people's work and help them to shape who they are as a writer. It was really fun to have other people help me kind of shape who I am as a Writer. We, we laughed a lot in that class.

What made it feel different when you compare it to a regular academic class?

I am not sure because I've not done any like real in school academic classes. All of my academic classes have been online. But it did, it made it feel more. I was more comfortable in the writing section than I am like in a math class or a science class.

So I want to take a little detour. You said that you were a non traditional student, that you're older and that you came back to school. What brought you back to school?

My son is autistic and he has asked me to come and work at his school. So I decided to come back to school so that I could get my 60 credits to become a paraprofessional. When I sat down with advising, I found out that I could actually get 90 credits by the end of this summer. And so then I could actually be a substitute teacher. And the schools need substitutes just as much as they need paraprofessionals. So that's what I'm going to do.

That's awesome. It sounds like advising really steered you in the right direction.

Yes.

So it's a win win for you.

Yeah.

You get to achieve your goal and another goal.

Yes, two goals.

Very cool. So let's talk a little bit more about how you got past the anxiety in the writing workshops.

There was another student in the class who was a little bit older like me. Not quite as old as me, but a little bit older like me. And we became friends and it was very. It was fun. It made me more relaxed to. To know that I wasn't being judged for being who I am.

That's very cool. What other surprises took place in the classroom?

I was really surprised at just how open and accepting and encouraging everybody was. Not just the professors, but also the other students. It's been a really rewarding experience to get to know some people and be able to have possibly lifelong friendships after this.

Yeah, well, since you revealed that I teach the novel writing class, I just would like to add that there are many different genres represented within a workshop group. You might have somebody who's writing fantasy and then someone who's writing a mystery. Science fiction, horror, romance, literary, a mix up of all those things. Do you think that that was part of what made it more fun?

Yeah, I think it was. The person I had my workshop group with was writing a more of a mystery kind of darker fantasy. And I write very upbeat, cheerful, everybody ends up happy in the end kinds of stories. So it was really interesting. To be able to be exposed to other types of writing.

Okay, I'd like to read a little piece from your artist statement, which is basically your writing philosophy, and it expresses your purpose for why you write. And then I'll ask you, how does that show up in your work? I write to process my trauma because while in abuse, I felt completely alone. I want to help others feel seen. I want them to know they're not alone and that they can learn how to survive or remove themselves from their situation. I also want to show readers that it is possible to thrive after the abuse.

So that shows up in my work in multiple ways. I have written in our class, the Creative Writing 2 class, I wrote a story, a short story about a girl who is kidnapped and ends up dissociating, which is a very difficult thing to go through. And I want other people to know what it's like, what it feels like, so that they know, oh my goodness, this thing is happening to me. Maybe this is how I can get through it myself. I have also written one full novel and one partial novel. The one that I wrote for the novel writing class, or I'm writing for the novel writing class is called Fathom's Cove and it's about a girl who is. It's in post apocalyptic world and she's living on the floor of Lake Superior in a big domed city and her dad is kidnapped and taken to the surface, which she knows to be incredibly dangerous. And she has to figure out how to not only save him, but also her community. And then I published, I self published a book in 2020 called Shattered and it is about a girl who has a narcissistic mother who is pushing her own beliefs and goals on her daughter. And because of those, because of that treatment, she ends up with the wrong man and she ends up pregnant. And she has to figure out for herself over the course of the book what she wants her future to hold and who she's really going to be.

You and I were talking before we officially started recording and I was saying that one of the things that I really appreciate about your work is that it is so human and it connects with many people who I believe would also want to be writers, but may think that, oh, you know, writing isn't about real life and that you're so your stories reveal that stories really do come from real life and that writers are real people. They're not special anointed people that, you know, come from a special walk of life. Talk a little bit about how your family connects with your Writing my family,.

I did not have the best family life growing up. My dad is. Has very narcissistic tendencies, and I was parentified and covert, covertly abused for the majority of my childhood and into my adulthood. I take a lot of the experiences I had with my family, and I use them as ways to help other people come up with ways that they themselves can figure out how to get out of their abuse or how to survive it.

Right. Very much like what you wrote in your statement.

Yeah.

You don't want them to think that they're alone. And if I was guessing, I would also say that you don't want them to think that there's, you know, something wrong with them and that they're not part of us. They are part of us.

Yeah. It is completely human to have the experiences that we have had.

Right. And your current family, the people that you fill your life with now, they.

Are the most supportive people ever.

Talk a little bit about how they fit in with your writing now.

Well, my spouse and I are part of the LGBTQ community. My spouse is trans, and I am asexual. So I am looking at bringing more attention to the disenfranchisement that we have as a community go through.

That's wonderful. Talk a little bit about the community and maybe how your writing might fit in there.

A lot of the people who are part of the community, who we are friends with, feel very alone in what they're going through, in what they're seeing. There's a lot of people who, like us, have lost their families because of who we are. And I am just trying to make sure that everybody knows that you can find. You can find family. You can. You can make a chosen family, and it will be even better than the family that you were born with.

Intentionally building your world with people that love and cherish you and support you.

Exactly.

That's awesome. When you think about where you're going to go next, what does that look like in your imagination?

Well, in the fall, I'm going to start substitute teaching, which I'm really excited about. But I am also starting a blog to bring some attention to the things that I've gone through to talk about the autism in my family, adhd, our LGBTQ issues like asexuality and transitioning from male to female.

When you think about the blog, that sounds like that's going to be very personal, and the fiction is also personal. How does the creative energy look different and how does it look similar? When you think about writing on the blog, you're Telling your own story. But when you're thinking about writing fiction, you're telling someone else's story.

For me, a lot of my characters are. They have the things that I've gone through, so they don't feel entirely. Not me. But it is very different to write a personal essay about yourself and your experiences than to write a creative fiction story about a person who may or may not be you in the same kinds of situations. I have a blog post that I have ready, and it is basically about how I became who I am today. And it was one of the. I feel like it is one of the most powerful pieces I've ever written.

Do you feel that readers of your fiction would understand the fiction better if they read the blog?

Yes, I think they would.

And vice versa. So people. Okay, so they really are intended to inform each other.

Yes.

And the blog is especially a wonderful way to demonstrate that writing has power and that everyone who has a keyboard or a pen has that power in them to express themselves.

And everybody has a story that should be heard.

That's so true. When you think about your future beyond this blog and the things that you're working on now, what do you think that would look like?

I would love to get an agent and a publisher and really start to reach out to the world with my stories.

And if you could imagine any book cover for a future book, what would it look like?

I have no idea.

What color would it be?

Blue or orange.

All right. And how many Would there be people or objects? What would be on the COVID Well,.

I can explain to you what my one book cover did look like. I took this picture, a long exposure picture inside of an amusement ride. And it's just like these blue kind of squiggles across the page. And it's kind of fascinating because the story is called Shattered, and it looks like the picture is shattered because of the way that I took it.

Oh, so kind of artistic creative.

Very artistic creative.

That's cool. All right. I want to take a little side trip and talk a little bit about the substitute teaching. What do you think that's going to look like?

I don't know. I'm really nervous about it. But I do know that I have a lot of friends at my son's school who are teachers. And I have the support of the staff there to help me understand and learn. And they have given me the right places to go to get additional education for being able to substitute teach. And it'll be really nice for my son to have me in the school on a regular basis so that if he does need something, he knows he has a safe place to go.

What grade students will you be working with?

I would love to work with all grade students, but probably elementary for now.

Okay. Does that mean you'll go out on the playground? We have recess.

Dating, probably.

All right, sounds good. If there is someone listening and they're thinking about taking creative writing classes here at lcc, what would you want them to know?

Do it. Just do it. Take the first step. Take that. Really? It feels like it's a giant leap, but honestly, it is just a tiny step to take to be able to really come into yourself and be who you want to be.

That's awesome. So if people want to stay in touch with you, how can they do that? Where can they find you online?

I have a website that is nomihawthorne.com and I will be using that as my blog, and I have samples of work up there right now.

Okay, so if people want to read the blog post that you were talking about earlier, they can find that on your website?

Yep.

Okay. We'll be sure to put that in the show notes.

Thank you.

It's been great chatting with you.

Thank you so much. You have been a godsend in the classes. It's been really great learning from you.

Thank you for listening to our talented poets and authors. Until next time, this has been Washington Square On-Air, where we showcase selections from Lansing Community College's literary journal, The Washington Square Review, a publication featuring writers from the Great Lakes State, across the nation and around the world. To find out more about The Washington Square Review, visit lcc.edu/wsr. We hope you enjoyed listening as much as we enjoyed sharing.