about the author

Emily Kuznia is the winner of two of our three poetry prizes this year for "Lemon Coconut Cookie Recipe" and "Not Meant To Be Doing This."

Emily is already an accomplished Manga artist and has plans to pursue and refine her skills with a fine arts degree at UNF. Her primary media include drawing, painting, and digital art. To see her work and read some of her other writings, including a black and white Manga short story called "Problems" and a full-color Manga comic, please visit Emily's excellent website: http://emilyk.no-leverage.com.

Though Emily is primarily an artist, writing is a consistent part of her life. She has taken formal creative writing classes at the high school and college level, winning a poetry award for a women's magazine and first place in an online short story contest. She practices writing fiction quite frequently, "in casual pieces" and uses verse only when she feels the ideas "would be best expressed through poetry." Her poetic process is described as an exercise in perspective:

When writing poetry, I often think about ways to express something mundane through a different angle. Often anthropomorphizing something, giving it a human-like feature, will give it a new perspective (like relating tree branches to clawing fingers).

For practicing writers, Emily advises simply to "read books as often as you can. I found that the act of reading a good book both inspires me to write things of my own, and constantly teaches me new words and techniques. Also, if you're serious about writing, take a creative writing class. They're very helpful." The poem "Not Meant to Be Doing This" was composed as an assignment in Professor Lany's creative writing class at FCCJ.