Grace: Lyrics have a way of penetrating deeper, ringing out so truthfully, as the singer sing-speaks the story or the feeling(s) or the image in one’s head. I love listening to music where you can tell that the songwriter plays with their words, and considers how each line should be delivered, whether with quiet vulnerability, mellow speaking voice, or loud belts of hurt.
Andrew: I really enjoy short stories, because they’re a special exercise in constructing a compelling narrative and memorable, distinct characters within a believable story arc that is also limited in page count. I’m particularly amazed by writers who are able to fit a novel’s worth of material into such a constrained space.
Karen: What’s incredibly moving to me is how fiction and creative nonfiction draw readers into the depths of human experience, emotion, and thought in a painstakingly crafted way—it all feels raw and true while still retaining beauty.
Cindy: I’m not a poet myself, but I’ve always been in love with poetry and the magnitude of the emotions it can convey. Poetry is unapologetic. It can be tender or brutal, it can break every convention or none of them. And it is palatable, in a way that prose sometimes isn’t, when you’re not in the headspace to digest something longer.
Amelia: I really love film! I think there’s something about the moving image that speaks so closely to who we are as humans. I think you can capture so much in one shot and it really is storytelling taken to another level.