Today, I’m excited to feature Ashley Lima! An award-winning poet and short story Writer, Ashley Lima specializes in surrealist Writing and storytelling. They mainly focus on social issues, including addiction, mental health, income inequality, LGBTQIA+ issues, and women’s rights. Ashley holds a BA and MA in English Creative Writing. Cendrine Marrouat: Hello Ashley! How did you get started as a writer? Any particular story? And what came first: poetry or short stories? Ashley Lima: My nana always encouraged me to keep a journal as a child. In fact, she still does to this day. Her encouragement through the years has certainly been a catalyst for continuing to think outside of the box. Much of what I do aims to make her proud. The first poetry competition I placed in was in the sixth grade. My town was holding an Arbor Day Poetry Contest, and I entered on a whim. I happened to take home third prize, but by the time it was announced, I didn’t even remember entering it. High school was a blur. I was heavily involved with the Art Department, and I was nearly flunking out of everything else, including English. When the time came to decide on college, I was set on film school. I wanted to be an award-winning director making thought-provoking movies. Obviously, that didn’t happen. During my three semesters of film school, I found myself drawn more to the storytelling aspect than the technical aspect. Despite my dislike for the latter, I ended up placing third in the Reel Film Festival for Agoraphobe, a short I wrote, directed, and edited. It had no dialogue and reflected the negative feelings I had throughout my time starting college. I ended up having to leave film school at 19. I took a semester off, and in that time, thought long and hard about what I wanted to do with my life. I thought back to an Introduction to English course I had previously taken. We were performing an analysis exercise for the play “Topdog/Underdog.” I raised my hand to give my thoughts, and after speaking, the professor looked at me and asked me what my major was. I told him “film,” to which he replied, “you’ll be studying English soon enough.” I took that conversation to heart and enrolled in English at my new school. It was difficult going from living on campus to commuting every day, but I made it happen. At 20, I entered a slam poetry contest on campus. The topic was injustice in higher education, and boy, did I have a lot to say. I ended up taking home the grand prize for that contest. I wasn’t expecting anything to come out of it other than being proud of myself for stepping out of my comfort zone. That solidified for me that I was doing the right things, despite my insecurities. At 21, I found out I was pregnant with my son. That was a very difficult time for me. Due to my newfound confidence in poetry, I took a poetry workshop, and through that, learned a lot and was able to get my negative emotions out on paper. The class was very vulnerable and open-minded. The professor was harsh, but he had his reasons, and it helped me grow as a writer. It was a very positive experience. Before I knew it, it was time to finish my studies. One of the last classes I had to take was a portfolio class. We could choose to write the beginnings of a novel or a poetry chapbook. I chose poetry, and my short chapbook of anti-capitalistic poetry, The American Dream, was born. I went on to graduate in May 2020, and we all know what happened then. The job market for writing and editing was nonexistent, and I continued working in restaurants to get by. I felt stuck, and from there, I enrolled in graduate school. There, I found my love for short story writing and began writing a novel. It’s been a long and winding road, but every speed bump has led me down this path and solidified my place as a creative, so I wouldn’t have it any other way. CM: How do you approach the writing process? What influences you the most? AL: I like to say that my writing is 95% thought and 5% actual writing, at least in terms of long-form works like my upcoming novel. I tend to ruminate a lot on ideas, jot down notes here and there, and wait until I feel confident in my words to start putting them on paper. When it comes to shorter works, such as poetry and short stories, I mainly rely on feelings. Much of my work is written on a whim from a spark of inspiration. For example, I’ll start by thinking about the point I want to get across, then I’ll fill in the blanks with a story or poem that does the job. When I feel uninspired, I enjoy doing restrictive exercises, such as random word generation. I’ll set the generator to five words and try to come up with a story or poem using them all. Often, even when the generated words have little relation to each other, the random nature of it can get my brain going, and I can weave a narrative/theme using them as a guide. It’s almost like a puzzle; I have to find the rest of the pieces to make it fit. I also enjoy using writing prompts and find a lot of inspiration in the contests that Vocal offers. I will admit that I’m not consistent with my writing. I’ll never be one of those writers who writes every day, and I’ve accepted that. I write when I feel like it, and never force myself when the feeling is just not there. I don’t think there’s one right way to be a writer, and these are just the methods that work for me. One thing that sticks with me from my time in college is this idea of a “writer’s toolbox”. I’m constantly learning better ways of doing things, and my metaphorical toolbox is constantly gaining new tools. Sometimes, I might even drop tools that aren’t serving me anymore. Much of my work is influenced by politics and mental health. I use writing to rationalize the world around me and the world within me. CM: In your bio, you mention “surrealist writing and storytelling” as your specialties. Would you tell us a little more about that? AL: I like writing about what’s real. Everything I write is grounded, somewhere, in reality. However, I love playing with paranormal and supernatural elements. That mix of fact and fantasy is enjoyable for me as both a reader and writer. I am a skeptic, through in through, but being a writer allows me to be a “God” of my own realities. I can make anything happen, and that’s exciting for me. I think some of the best examples of my surrealist style on Vocal can be seen in the pieces “Nothing” and “The Longest Night”. Both stories have the theme of mental health mixed with a supernatural event. In both instances, it’s made purposefully difficult for the reader to know if the person is actually experiencing the event or if it’s a hallucination. I like straddling that line and allowing my audience to come up with their own conclusions. In the novel I’m working on, I play with a similar idea. The main character must decide if her delusions and psychosis symptoms are nothing but her brain coping (poorly, might I add) with a new environment or if she’s experiencing something truly paranormal. CM: How would you define your style? Is there one piece you wrote that sums up who you are as a writer? Why? AL: I’m not sure how to put words to my style, but I do feel as though I’ve curated a unique voice that’s relatively consistent throughout my body of work. I think that’s, in part, due to my writingphilosophy, which is “truth.” Though a lot of the work I create is fictional, a big part of my process is honesty. I can write about things that are true to me without spilling explicit details from my real life. The feelings and themes I try to portray in my work are all based off real-life concepts, ideas, and emotions, even some that are not my own. “Backyard Blues” is a piece I wrote during graduate school, which I feels exemplifies my style quite well. When writing short stories, I enjoy mixing poetic themes into the prose, and I feel paragraph seven is a good example of that idea. Though I am not a man, and I have never dated a woman named Jean, I put myself into my fictional character’s shoes. I felt the emotions he was feeling, and put them down on paper, so he was able to reflect on this season of his life and potentially find hope in the darkness of his pain. One thing I enjoy about writing is the ability to be many different people. When writing short stories, I always try to step outside of myself to create authentic, relatable, characters even if their thoughts, feelings, and opinions are not my own. While my short fiction does a good job at creating new lives, my poetry is certainly the placeholder for my own personal pain. Much of what I write about poetically is grounded in things I’ve experienced or simply thoughts I need to go out of my head. CM: You are currently working on your debut novel. How are things going for you? And how different is that process from writing short stories or poems? AL: I never saw myself as someone capable of writing a novel. The task always seemed too complicated for me to comprehend. I also had doubts about my ability to stick with it, as in the past, I had begun longer projects and never finished them. I knew, going into this project, that it was different. Before I moved to where I live now, I visited the place a handful of times. It’s a tiny rural area in Southwest Virginia with a lot of grim history. During my visit in 2021, my mother-in-law and her cousin decided to take me out one night to a “haunted house.” That building is called the Graham Mansion. It was after midnight, and while there, my mother-in-law and her cousin were messing with lights in the car. They were purposefully trying to scare me, and admittedly, it kind of worked. As we were looking into the dark night with only the high beams of the car, I saw two human-like figures on top of a hill. I kept straining my eyes trying to see what they were, but I couldn’t make them out. When I got to bed that evening, I had horrible nightmares, paralyzing terrors. The two figures I saw in my dreams were bloodied and pointing at me. Without words, they told me they wanted me to solve their murders; avenge their deaths. I drove back to Graham’s the next day while the sun was out, and I bet you can guess, the two figures were statues. Still, that idea stuck with me. Later that month, I began writing, and in two days, I had 20,000 words down on paper. Things have not always been that smooth. It’s been a lot of on again off again work, and I didn’t finish writing my manuscript in full until March of this year. The first 10 chapters started out in the third person, and I had to go back and change everything to first person about eight months into the work. I found that the change made it easier for me to step into the main character’s shoes and become her while I was writing. I think that it has made the book much better, but it can also be...

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