Elena Belyea
(2005)
How would you characterize the influence of your YWW experience in your life?
I think about YWW daily. As a camper, it was my first experience with people who saw and interacted with the world the way I did— who had too many feelings and were trying to figure out what to do with them. I met people who were serious about creating not good, but excellent work. Since then, I’ve collaborated with friends from YWW on chapbooks, plays, and short films. My time at YWW reminds me to look at every experience as an opportunity for a potential project/poem/whatever.
What’s the best advice you can give a Young Writer (in general or in your specific genre)?
The first draft will be bad. Forgive yourself and write it anyway.
The story will tell you what it wants if you listen to it.
If you’re stuck, go for a walk.
What do you find yourself most often reading or listening to lately and why?
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami because I haven’t had the time to dig in until now.
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides because it’s worth re-reading for the fifteenth time.
Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson, because of Geryon’s dog.