This is one of an ongoing series of interviews with contributors to The 3288 Review.
Emma Moser graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in English at Westfield State University, and is currently an MFA candidate for fiction writing at Southern Connecticut State University. Her multi-genre work has appeared or is forthcoming at over a dozen venues, including Prairie Margins; The 3288 Review; Yellow Chair Review; Right Hand Pointing; Life in 10 Minutes; Thin Air Magazine; Cheat River Review; The Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle; Zoomoozophone Review; Thoreau’s Rooster; Sweatpants & Coffee; and Fuck Fiction. She is the creator of the blog Antiquarian Desiderium, and also a contributor at Writers Get Together. Emma’s short story “This is How We Mourn” appeared in our inaugural issue in August 2015.
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3288 Review: How and when did you get started writing? Was there a recognizable moment or event which ignited the creative spark?
Emma Moser: The answer to that question is a little complex, because for many years, writing was the childhood dream I’d buried in the backyard and forgotten. It went from writing absurdities about vampires as a ten-year-old to not touching creative writing for almost a decade. I was always an avid classics reader, so even as a kid my standards for writing were very high; I think I discouraged myself too much. It wasn’t until I was 18 that, suddenly, I started to write again. I’d experienced two family deaths in that same year, which left me painfully disoriented. The day my grandfather died, I remember running upstairs and writing every little memory of him I could think of in a notebook. It took days to complete. As time passed, writing (for whatever reason) remained my outlet for processing that depression, for giving voice to the black, tangled mess inside of me. I guess what I was writing was better than my ten-year-old vampire stories, because my college professors began to tell me, “You really need to keep this up.” So here I am, 22, pursuing writing as a dream again. Continue reading →