Author Spotlight: Angela Townsend

Angela Townsend won 2nd prize in Non-fiction in the Northwind Writing Award 2023 for her non-fiction story “Basking.” It is an honor to feature her Q&A here on Raw Earth Ink as part of our promotion of truly exceptional authors.

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Q & A

Candice: In your short story “Basking,” you seem to master the inner world of a new college student and her challenge with adapting to college-life manifesting in a degree of orthorexia or type of eating disorder. This is an important and oft neglected subject, is that one reason you chose it for a short story?

Angela: This topic is close to my heart, as “Basking” is inspired a bit by my own experience. In times of turmoil, I think we often reach for ways to squeeze life back into our own two hands. There is healing in surrendering to the great wild open, but we need gentle companions to help us feel safe on that odyssey.

C: You are close to your mother, is this relationship influential in your own writing, given her background as a writer also?

A: She is my constant inspiration. My Mom introduced me to the companionship of words before I could hold a crayon. We made weekly pilgrimages to the library, carrying home as many books as they’d allow, and she read me “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and Maya Angelou’s poetry as far back as kindergarten. Of course, my favorite poems were always her own. We are our own little two-woman writers’ colony, with poetry and prose flying across Pennsylvania to one another every day. Her best friendship constantly gives me the courage and light to write from my soul.

C: Your studies include time in a Theological Seminary. Does that influence the style you employ as a writer in any way? Or the direction you choose? And if so, how?

A: I have always felt writing to be a gift from a generous, joyful God. For me, it is a sort of prayer. I am incorrigibly smitten with this ragged world, so I am always striving to bear witness to light. My small stories are nestled in the big story of mercy.

C: How does your admirable work with rescuing cats and your sanctuary, affect the direction of your writing if at all?

C: What wakes you up in the night/gets you up in the morning, and demands you write?

A: An overflow of love. For good and ill, I have always erred on the side of exuberance. I am incurably infatuated with people, animals, and the thousand glistening gifts of any ordinary day. I feel driven to capture it all, as a kind of thanks.

C: The humor of your story is inescapable. I particularly felt drawn to your description of The Walrus and how by the story’s end, Roy does not respond. For me, it was better that he not respond, as such unsung heroes do not relish attention but are perhaps angels among us. Do you feel similarly or was his role different for you?

A: You’ve captured it! I believe we are all granted a lavishment of companions across our timeline, some for just a season. Yet they travel with us always, asking only that we treasure them and let their love enlarge us.

C: What do you get out of other writers and how? Meaning, when you read a book, you absolutely love, what is it specifically that really pulls you in?

A: I experience other writers as my best friends. I am drawn to those writers who, even in thick lament, leave me with the sense that grace will prevail, and all shall be loved. Often the most sheltering words come from people whose lives are profoundly different from my own, yet with a family resemblance that makes the world feel like a hearth.

C: Which writers have cultivated in you an urge to write as well as them, even if differently and what was it about their writing or story that encouraged you to begin your journey as a writer?

A: My touchstones include Henri Nouwen, Emily Dickinson, Madeleine L’Engle, Anne Lamott, Brian Doyle, C.S. Lewis, Kathleen Norris, Mary Oliver, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Dave Barry. As different as they are, each one strikes me as having a conscious sense of being on pilgrimage, falling often but trusting greatly. They all take hold of rebel joy and love life furiously, even in times of torrential tears. They also own their odd and incandescent selves fully, something I am a long way from doing!

C: Your story touched me on many levels, not least in really illustrating the challenges of going to University and how they can exacerbate ‘conditions’ such as anorexia, because of being alone for the first time. What was your goal with this story in terms of what you wanted to ultimately convey?

A: I think the essential message is that we are never ultimately alone. Our seasons of barest isolation are ringed with angels, who may wear bushy mustaches or Java City aprons. There is nowhere we can travel where we can’t find mercy.

C: The encouragement aspect of your story was inescapable, and one of the most poignant elements. Do you believe encouragement goes a long way in building others up and helping them avoid falling? When we consider the high attrition rates in education, especially University, how important is this?

A: I believe encouragement is as essential as breath. We as a species are exasperatingly blind to our own light, and it is the better part of love to merely be a mirror. I attribute the entirety of my thriving to the encouragement of my family, and I see daily how a mere handful of words can give someone back to themselves. I keep a secret, sacred “encouragement” folder in my own inbox!

C: How much does the physicality of your existence influence your writing? And what else do you believe really drives you as a writer in terms of influence and/or tools that you utilize consciously or subconsciously to craft your storytelling?

A: Although I would do cartwheels for a cure, I would never trade away the force with which a lifetime of Type 1 diabetes has turned me to writing. They don’t use this word anymore, but when I was diagnosed at age nine, they described me as a “brittle” diabetic – particularly challenging to control (which is, of course, a problematic word in itself). I learned quickly that, even if I felt poorly, I could transcend my body when I wrote. With my little notebook, my weary body became fully cheetah, free. Writing has been a kind of peace treaty between body and soul for me, where they can meet on healing ground.

C: Is there anything you really despise about writing or writers, a pet peeve or something that disgusts you when you read it?

A: I grieve all instances of meanness and competition turned caustic. I am a big believer that “we need us all,” and that there is room at love’s table for the whole kaleidoscope of words and their wielders. To turn the question around, my heart thrills every time I feel part of a gentle, generous community of writers rejoicing in each other.

C: How do you envision your writing journey in say, five years’ time, what do you hope in terms of where you will find yourself?

A: If I could trust that my words offer candles and companionship, that would be the highest joy. Whenever my ego belches a desire for accolades, I remind it that the goal is to bear hope and light, and to trust that my little offerings will land where they are intended.

C: If you were describing yourself to someone else, anonymously and they did not know you, what would you want them to know about you?

A: Although she stumbles hourly, Angie strives to do everything from love.

C: Do you think a writer needs a degree of ‘education’ or do you believe a writer is born able to write or becomes able to write through lived experience primarily?

A: I believe there are as many paths to life-giving writing as there are lives. For this reason, I’ve always been ravenous for biographies of writers, a motley lot of miracles!

C: Your animal family: how do they encourage you? Would you be the person you are today if they were not in your life?

A: I don’t believe I could write another paragraph if not for these comedians and counselors. Animals live with such a shimmery immediacy, they lead me to experience my life in real-time, which is the only address for inspiration. I am exasperatingly indoorsy, but they nudge me to remember that I am “in nature” by the sheer, spectacular virtue of having a body. They love without calculus and have never heard the word “worthy,” so they are singularly good at picking me up from rejection or just a rumply day. And they have never heard of Pushcart nominations or The Paris Review, so they catch my wandering ego when it loses love’s path!

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To read The 2023 Northwind Treasury, including Angela’s winning piece, you can purchase it (come December) in paperback on Lulu, Barnes & Noble, or Amazon or as an eBook on Lulu, Nook, Kobo, or Kindle. To see the list of contents and winners, visit our winner’s page.