Anca Vlasopolos

Oyster River Pages: What literary pilgrimages have you gone on?

Anca Vlasopolos: The Wordsworths' Grasmere cottage, Beatrix Potter's home, and Herman Melville's house in the Berkshires.

ORP: How does your own writing or art surprise you?

AV: I often realize how dark my poems are.

ORP: Do you rely more on discipline, inspiration, or something else when writing or creating artwork?

AV: First, inspiration, then discipline.

ORP: Are you working on anything at present that you would like to share with your readers/viewers?

AV: I am putting the finishing touches on a fifth collection of poetry called RISING.

ORP: Who is an up-and-coming writer or artist that you would recommend our ORP audience check out?

AV: Natalie Diaz

ORP: What are three words you would use to describe yourself?

AV: Intense. Concerned. Loving.

ORP: What is the artist’s/writer’s greatest asset?

AV: Not being swayed by the politics of the publishing market.

Anca Vlasopolos published the award-winning novel The New Bedford Samurai; the award-winning memoir No Return Address: A Memoir of Displacement; four collections of poems, Often Fanged Light (Adelaide Books, 2019), Cartographies of Scale (and Wing) (2015), Walking Toward Solstice (2012), and Penguins in a Warming World (2007); three poetry chapbooks, a detective novel, Missing Members, and over three hundred poems and short stories in literary journals.

READ Anca’s POEM “See Them Rise” FROM ISSUE 5.1 HERE.