Adira Al-Hilo
ORP: What does success as a writer or artist mean to you?
Adira Al-Hilo: Success in writing, to me, is in the moment when I’m writing. Being able to have the time and space to write at all is success to me. I don’t pressure myself to see writing as a career or something that will make me money, I see it as my lifestyle and something that has saved me in many ways and connected me to people and places I never thought possible. I think that writing is my bridge into other cultures and other languages, it’s how I orient myself in the world but it’s also constantly in my mind and it’s the lens through which I see everyone I converse with. I want to know peoples stories, I want to have intimate conversations that fill me up with an energy that can come out onto a page later.
ORP: Do you know more than one language? How does this influence your art and/or writing?
Adira Al-Hilo: Yes, I know Arabic and German and I am learning Portuguese right now. I think that linguistic study is the backbone of writing for me, I am often aware that a word in English can take on a whole different meaning in another language and I like to manipulate that, I am very fascinated with how I can use language to emphasize specific sensations and I enjoy doing research into languages that I don’t speak in order to emphasize this, I like to understand the history of certain words and how they have traveled to become what they are in English.
ORP: What does vulnerability mean to you as an artist and/or writer?
Adira Al-Hilo: It’s all about the conversation. The conversation with yourself at its most intimate state, the conversation with the environment around you, the conversation with others, etc. it all creates a space where we can converse with the stranger in us and create something truly vulnerable from that. The gap between what I do know and what I don’t know is the space of uncertainty that I live in and I always think there is a conversation happening from every angle and tuning into my emotions whether they are ugly or beautiful preserves that conversation and allows me to feel safe to open up.
ORP: What books have you read many times?
Adira Al-Hilo: The Eyes of the Skin by Juhani Pallasmaa, The Newly Born Woman by Hélène Cixous, and The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector.
ORP: What is the most valuable piece of advice you’ve been given about writing or creating? What advice would you give to another writer or artist?
Adira Al-Hilo: The most valuable piece of advice I ever received was in the form of a question posed by Min Jin Lee on a panel. She said that we must ask ourselves if we truly love writing or if we just want our name on something. I think that in order to write we must be a little bit ruthless and aware of our own ego so as not to fall into a trap where we cannot receive criticism. When I’m writing I know when it is honest and when it isn’t, and if it’s not honest I have that conversation with myself and I delete it. I don’t believe that a label has any meaning in practice, I don’t write because I want to be a writer, I write because there is no other way. I seek to be completely naked and shameless with whatever it is that I’m creating. It happens often that something I wrote 6 months ago won’t resonate with me today because I’m at a moment where I am rapidly improving and I’m improving because I am honest with myself of what is and isn’t meeting my standards. I see this kind of self-criticism as positive because it means I’m getting better.
