By saying that all my characters have a little bit of me in them, I mean that I try to be invested and empathetic in all my characters—whether they a… - Jessica Hagedorn

…Research is always involved, to make sure details, language and atmosphere feel right. Then comes the hard work of a writer, which is the writing itself. One sentence leads to another and then another… You try to maintain focus and discipline, writing for as long as you can, everyday until you’re done with a draft. Then you go back and start revising and the mysterious creative process begins all over again. Each time you begin, you hopefully go deeper into your story and your characters and end up surprising yourself.

I'm not a writer who works off an outline. I don't do file cards. Some writers know where they're going when they sit down to write a novel. I know there are certain things I want to include, but I'm character driven and if the characters keep moving and living and growing on me, the story unfolds. It's like a puzzle which starts falling into place. But I never know where I'm going when I start.

Defiant, naive, and passionate, we are sprouting up all over the Bay Area-artists of color who write, perform, and collaborate with each other, borders be damned. We are muralistas, filmmakers, musicians, dancers, painters, printmakers, small press publishers, playwrights, poets, and more poets. . . . San Francisco seems to be more a city of poets and musicians than anything else. Rock 'n' roll, R&B, the funk mystique of Oakland, the abstract seduction of jazz, and the glorious rants and chants of loup garous, gypsies, sympathetic cowboys, and water buffalo shamans: Al Robles, Ishmael Reed, Norman Jayo, Ntozake Shange, Victor Hernandez Cruz, Janice Mirikitani, Thulani Davis, David Henderson, Alejandro Murguia, Ed Dom, Alta, Serafin and Lou Syquia, Kitty Tsui, and on and on.... They are my teachers and peers, kindred spirits, borders be damned. A movement is afoot to assert ourselves as artists and thinkers, to celebrate our individual histories, our rich and complicated ethnicities.