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Home / Creative/Critical Graduate Student Spotlight / Emma Wood

3 Questions with Creative/Critical PhD Student Emma Wood

Creative Writing Program Spotlight Fall 2020 EMMA WINSOR WOOD 1. CW interns: What keeps you writing? Emma: The feeling that, without it, my life would slip through my fingers. Writing is how I think, think through things. Without it, there would just be... a series of events and impressions. It’s kind of paradoxical because to write, you must step “away” from life, but without writing an experience, I feel I haven’t fully lived it. CW: Who are some of your favorite authors/works at this moment? E: Zadie Smith, Intimations—a short book 3rd year PhD in the Creative/Critical Concentration, Sagittarius 3. CW: Do you have a ritual you do before you write? If so, what is it? E: We live in Bonny Doon; we were so lucky our house survived the fire, and that our neighborhood was mostly untouched. I love to sit at a desk by a window and watch the redwoods sway in the breeze or the mist come in through the valley below us. Looking (literally) outside of myself— and also beyond the world of mirrors technology has trapped us in—tends to still my mind so I can maintain the sustained attention required to write. of essays she wrote during the pandemic. She’s so smart it hurts. Mary Ruefle, The Most of It—a book of prose poems/experiments. The first piece, “Snow,” starts like this: “Every time it starts to snow, I would like to have sex.” CW: What was your most treasured book growing up? E: I read a lot of nineteenth-century novels as a kid—Jane Eyre was a favorite for a long time, then, in college, Anna Karenina (I was a Russian Studies major). CW: Do you have a favorite line you’ve written you want to share? E: I find my favorites are never other people’s favorites. But one of my favorites is this: “The cemetery sprinklers are on despite the drought. Because that grass is people. That grass is DNA.” Excerpt from “Quotidian” by Emma Winsor Wood The kettle doesn’t hold Enough for us both In the morning I boil just enough For myself A stray grain burning Into ash * I nearly stepped on a bird It flew upward White rustle & away Behind me A pick-up truck brakes With a scream No I did * The grass in our yard So wet mornings It’s as if it rained In the last dark Unreal An imposter It grows much faster

Kiley McLaughlin
Kristen Nelson
Kirstin Wagner
Emma Wood
Conner Bassett
Mia T. Boykin
Madison McCartha
Thaïs Miller
Nathan Osorio

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Last modified: May 2, 2021 18.97.9.174