Editor Emeritus Evan Mariah Pettit is the subject of our featured interview today. She was the first Assistant Editor LSQ ever had and she’s awesome.
Hi Evan! First off, please tell us a bit about yourself. Have any super powers or secret talents?
I have written odd poems and stories since I was very little. I was fed Shel Silverstein and Dr. Sues and inherited both of my parent’s love of books and reading. Add my love of Clive Barker’s dark, bloody imagery and Stephen King’s masterful narratives that hooked me in my teens, to Nick Cave’s writing/music to graphic novels like Transmetropolitan (Warren Ellis) and The Invisibles (Grant Morrison), to poetry by Edward Gorey, and Edward Lear, so, a mixed bag. Currently my writing has slowed considerably as I focus on radiology school, and work, but I intend to at least finish my Gold Dust installments before I die, ha. I respect working writers with all my heart, and support support support!
Can you tell us a bit about what inspired your story in the anthology?
“Loose” was kind of an homage to Lovecraft, crossed with a desire to paint a picture of a, penultimate, whore. I am celebrating every aspect of this woman, and I wanted to be as honest as possible, as blunt as possible. It is what it is. With a monster.
What have you been up to lately? Do you have any books out right now? Are you working on anything new?
I put together a collection of my poetry and some short stories out through Amazon a few years ago, “Erfing along the Bed with Cakely Items“.
I’m always fascinated by where and how people work. What is your writing setup like? Any tools you enjoy using?
Composition books, pen, insomnia and impulse. Never been comfortable sitting at a desk typing, but maybe I have a shitty chair. No, I know for a fact I do. Chicken scrawl for life.
Most writers are lifelong readers and books tend to be important to them. What books or stories have most influenced your life (genre stories or otherwise)?
Oh, I guess I’ll be redundant here. Going back to Clive Barker’s earlier works, especially Imajica, Stephen King, especially his Dark Tower opus, Empire of the Sun-really the whole of Ballard’s library, Haruki Murakami, the poetry of T.S. Eliot, Silverstein, Lear, Blake, Dickinson, Dorothy Parker, Shirley Jackson, comics, Warren Ellis, The Hobbit, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Jeff VanderMeer, China Mieville, the news, Arthur Machen, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert W. Chambers, Crowley, mythology, fantastical things, animals, nature, the end of days, my cruel mind, and everything and everyone, around me,
Where can we learn more about you and your writing?
I do some photos, too. Am fascinated by documenting via photography these days.
Thanks Evan! We’ll be sure to keep an eye out for your photos!
If you’re intrigued by the inspiration behind “Loose”, consider getting yourself a copy of “The Best of Luna Station Quarterly: The First Five Years” and read it for yourself, along with the other forty-nine awesome stories and gorgeous cover art by Julie Dillon.