Friday Feature: @nonzerospin

The focus for this week's Proser Showcase had an exceedingly high demand for interview. A number of community members expressed an interest in finding out more about her, who she is, and what brought her to this community.

Without further ado, then, here are the highlights from our recent correspondence with writer, poet, singer, and philosopher Diane Castiglioni--known here as @nonzerospin.

Diane says that she travels a lot, but she generally "alights longer either in San Francisco or Santa Fe."

When she isn't writing poetry and prose, her job is to work with "an amazing team of kick-ass people who live all over the world and come together to help community groups/organizations solve complex problems, or at least get their arms further around them. (Problems like poverty, racism, sharing resources - you know, bleeding heart kind of stuff)."

P: What is your relationship with writing and how has it evolved?

D: Having been a kidnapped Russian princess as an infant and abandoned in a small town where drinking, shooting, and spitting tobacco were the crown jewels of daily activity, I escaped into the freakish sports of reading and writing. Voraciously.

Somewhere in the archives are poems I wrote as a little kid - they all rhyme and are lousy with devotion or despair. Moving to more formal styles as a young teenage working stiff, I was ‘corrected’ for writing Elizabethan couplets and sonnets as customer service responses. I fared better in college when profs accepted my short stories as term papers.

I brooded in my off time, filling notebooks and disks with unearthed musings, never intended to see light of day. Eventually I was pushed by a couple of very good writers into sharing my work, knuckling up for readings and even hosting poetry events. Since then, I’ve contributed to a publication in France, edited a collection of essays for ATWG, and have a few poems published by small presses.

P: Briefly discuss the value that reading adds to both your personal and professional life.

D: Outside of traveling to foreign terrains (even the ones right next door), reading is the best way to discover new worlds. Good writing can sometimes satisfy my hunger to inhabit personas, places, and perspectives outside my own.

In my work, we use metaphor as a way to help people drop out of their habitual patterns of perceiving and interacting with the world, even shift their attitudes. Bringing diverse books and articles, we embed time for syntopical reading. More often than not I hear people still talking about what they read days later and using it to turn their situation in a way they never dreamed of. Reading is powerful stuff. Reading (or writing) a true thing is a transformative tonic.

P: How would you describe your current literary ventures and what can we look forward to in future posts?

D: Honing my craft and taking more risks here on Prose. is a main focus. I’ve also recently started submitting poems to a few literary journals; have a couple acceptances, a couple rejections, and waiting to hear back from others. Rumbling in the subterranean caves of my psyche is a magical realism / sci-fi novel which would be fun to post on Prose. but I have a few projects to finish before getting started on that. Otherwise, I still interview writers, edit essays by foreign scientists, and MC poetry events (wouldn’t it be cool to have one for the writers of Prose.?!). Prose.Fest15!

P: What does Prose. mean to you? What brought you here and what keeps you coming back?

D: Prose. is a font of inspiration! I used to perform music; feeling the applause or dismay of an audience is a life giving thing. Writing is a more solitary endeavor unless one actively seeks community for it (and often the writing personality is diametrically opposed to that). Magic happens in the implicit conversation between the offering and the receiving of a creative act, even without words. Prose. allows that conversation to take place between writers - I’m hooked.

I was recruited to check out Prose. and immediately liked it. I had been invited to a few other writing apps and found them either too tedious to be useful or didn’t click with the community. The simplicity and elegance of the format here is perfect. I have a wishlist for future versions but overall it has all the right ingredients. The collection of authors is exceptional – a treasure in a variety of styles and voices, and generous engagement.

@Valerie, @rh and @Lsu11 were instrumental from the very beginning to make me feel welcome, encouraged, and inspired to keep participating. They are excellent stewards and examples of what we can all be to grow this platform, broader and deeper, and guide/push each other to be even better writers. I am grateful to them and plenty of others who inspire me with their brave voices and provide thoughtful commentary on my writing, especially @Alchemyst, @rioramireznovel, @Romae, @ME-solushospes, @alyptik, @another-proser, @Clburdett and so many others.

P: Where else can we find you and your writing?

D: I’ll share links and info when publishing happens. Otherwise, she says you can find here on Twitter @dcastiglioni and "in the crowd cheering you all on."

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This #FridayFeature blog series is designed to help you get to know your fellow community members better. Would you like to nominate someone for interview? Have a question you’re dying to ask of someone on the platform? Send us a private message here or visit our contact page to get in touch: theprose.com/p/contact.