Dusty to Polished: Grace Anderson
What sparks your urge to write, is it always the same?
I love writing about nature and the human condition, so I am often inspired to write after taking long walks where I can observe the natural world. Often what I see outside mimics something that I am trying to understand in life — ferns unfurling remind me that we deserve time to unfurl and be celebrated, cooperation in nature reminds me that we as humans can also find ways to move cooperatively to sustain ourselves as a community – things like that.
Sometimes I write when I’m enraged by society which can be useful but I am trying to do that less. My writing is better when it comes from a more settled place. Sometimes I just have to sit down and write without anything sparking it. When I do that, I remind myself that I love writing and there is always something to be said whether it’s shared or not.
Do you follow a specific process or set of steps when editing?
Recently, I started printing the pages that I want to revise. I do edits by hand and when I return to my computer, I rewrite each sentence of the piece line by line as I incorporate the edits. I am able to catch my mistakes and focus better on the printed pages and rewriting each sentence forces me to get more and more precise about what I want to say.
How do you know when a piece is truly “done” and ready for publication?
Great question! Sometimes it’s a deadline, ha! In that case, I’m like well, it has to be done. Otherwise, I try to listen to what my body and mind are saying. Have I said everything that I need to say for now?
How would you describe your writing process with an image?
Oh, I think it’s an image of someone taking a nice long stroll without a direction in mind. That someone is me!
What do you think makes the writing community at The New School unique?
The ability to interact with the various creative disciplines at The New School is unique. For example, this week, Cheryl Dunye, a Black lesbian filmmaker, was on campus for a Q&A, masterclass, and 30th anniversary screening of her breakthrough film Watermelon Woman. I attended all three events and received so much insight from the perspective of a filmmaker of how to set a scene and pull a viewer, or reader, in.
Bio: Grace Anderson is a Black queer writer & curator. She started The Lupine Collaborative, a literary organization for Black women, transgender, and non-binary nature, climate, and environmental writers. She’s co-editing a multimedia anthology on “Blackness, Queerness, and Nature” (working title) that will be published by Milkweed Editions in 2027.
This interview series is produced by Hijab Ahmed.