Home and Away: Writing About Place

How does the concept of “home” present in your writing? From setting stories in your hometown to exploring what it means to remake a home after immigration to creating new versions of home altogether, home can be its own sort of character. Mai Sennaar, author of They Dream In Gold, Diana Rojas, author of Litany of Saints, and Amanda Shaw, author of It Will Have Been So Beautiful, discuss how they navigate the idea of home to expand their stories and poems.

Mai Sennaar is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. The Smithsonian Affiliate Museum of the African Diaspora, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and the Classical Theatre of Harlem are among the venues that have presented her plays. Her short film Wax Lovers’ Playlist premiered at AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center and was an Official Selection of the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival. She is the book writer for Carry On!, a new musical by Broadway composer Diana Wharton-Sennaar and the creative director of the performing arts company MWPLive. They Dream in Gold is her first novel. She lives between Baltimore and Dakar.

Amanda Shaw set out into the world with a vague idea of what was ahead. At each juncture, the desire to write returned. After two decades of teaching, she got her Master's degree in Poetry from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson. Shaw is the book review editor for Lily Poetry Review, a member of the Writer's Center in Bethesda, and a frequent contributor to Warren Wilson’s DC alumni community. Her debut poetry collection, It Will Have Been So Beautiful, will be published in March by Lily Poetry Review Books.

Diana Rojas has written in everything from large daily newspapers to niche newsletters, on subjects ranging from untimely deaths and school board meetings, to housing and sustainability issues. She grew up in Connecticut and New Jersey and has lived in five different countries. Diana has tried her hand at fundraising, real estate, gardening and child rearing, but despite her NYU journalism degree, she never expected to write a book. Litany of Saints is her first novel. She lives, taxed and unrepresented, in Washington, DC.

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