My friend and fellow Wilkes University alum, Dawn Leas, author of the poetry chapbook I Know When to Keep Quiet, was recently interviewed on the local  WVIA radio station for a program called “The Art Scene.” The interviewer, Erika Funke, did a great job with the questions and covered everything from Dawn’s writing process to creating a narrative arc for her book.

There’s a lot about the interview I liked, including the portion where she talked about revision/the writing process. She mentioned that while attending the Wilkes University Graduate Creative Writing Program, she had trouble parting with some lines in her poems based on feedback given by her mentors and peers. Anyone who writes knows how hard it is to sometimes axe lines or even whole pages, but ultimately, we come to trust the advice of our fellow writers and our work ends up stronger.

Dawn also read a few poems during the interview and discussed some of the poets she studied that influenced the central theme of family/place that fill the poems.

To listen to the full interview, click here.

Also, I will be reading with Dawn on Friday, Jan. 21 at the Barnes & Noble in downtown Wilkes-Barre  (7 S. Main Street) at 7 p.m. Her chapbook and my chapbook, Front Man, will be available for sale there.