Interviews
Mobi Warren, a local educator and master naturalist, leads monthly Haiku Hikes through the inspirational terrain at Government Canyon State Natural Area. As an environmental activist/poet, she has organized poetry readings at Mitchell Lake Audubon Center and at Luminaria 2010. Warren is also an experienced workshop facilitator who loves to weave observations of the natural world into everyday happenings.
Warren will teach the class, Dawn and Dusk: Crepuscular Writing, during Gemini Ink’s Summer Literary Festival. The class will take place July 18th-20th at Government Canyon State Natural Area and Gemini Ink. At the state park, class participants will hike at dawn and dusk, create journal entries about their experiences, and then, craft their journal entries into poems at Gemini Ink.
Gemini Ink intern Iris Ayala interviewed Warren about her upcoming class, the relationship between nature and art, her favorite poem about nature, and the current state of the environment.
Local college professor, San Antonio Current columnist and editor, and employee at the public library, Lyle Rosdahl manages to juggle each vocation and still find time to put pen to paper for his personal writing. Additionally, Rosdahl journals, communicates, and encourages other writers via his website. Incorporating both Oulipo, a literary technique that advocates constraints in writing, and flash fiction, Rosdahl continues to produce innovative and inspiring pieces for the writing community.
Rosdahl will conduct the class, Structural Biomimicry in Short Prose, during Gemini Ink’s Summer Literary Festival. The class will be held the week of July 12 through July 15. Class participants will examine some of nature’s processes and models and use those insights to create similar structures within their writing.
Gemini Ink intern Megan Peak interviewed Rosdahl and discussed his writing process, fascination with Oulipo, and what inspires him to write.
Carolina G. Flores in her Blue Star Art Complex studio. Photo by: Anisa Onofre.
Artist Carolina G. Flores recently teamed up with Gemini Ink’s Writers in Communities (WIC), to create broadsides inspired by poetry written by 7th and 8th grade students from Edward H. White Middle School. The “My Part of Town” project was funded by Rackspace, and gave students the opportunity to compose poems that depict their neighborhood. Although Flores did not work directly with the students, she has taken their poems and given them life through her bold water color illustrations.
“How I paint is more joy than anything,” Flores said. “The joy of just being alive, celebrating my family history, the beauty of the flowers … I think what my paintings do, is, make people very happy.”
Her vibrant pieces of work done in watercolor, oils, silks and ceramic are displayed at the Carolina G. Flores Studio, located in the Blue Star Art Complex.
Flores credits her middle school teacher, Ms. Brown as the person that introduced her to art.
“She was very, very much involved with my talent and I didn’t realize it was worth much, but she took so much interest in me,” Flores said.
It is no wonder that Flores’s dedication to community-based work and teaching has always been a part of her life. In fall of 2009, her first venture with WIC was a ceramics project with students from East Central Independent School District.
Flores is currently a part-time art teacher at The Winston School, a school for children with learning disabilities.
“I’ve realized that if I don’t teach, I miss it,” Flores said. “I miss communicating with young people and sharing what I know.”
Flores still makes time to paint for herself. As part of collaboration with two other artists named Carolina, 25 of Flores’s paintings were exhibited at the Centro Cultural Aztlan show, Carolina por Tres.
“I’m at a point where I want to do as many paintings and say as many things as I want to say with my canvasses,” Flores said.
– by Melinda Gonzales, Gemini Ink intern
Joe McKinney is a jack of all trades. By day he’s a homicide detective for the San Antonio Police Department and by night he’s penning horror tales. McKinney is the author of Dead City (Kensington Publishing Corp., 2006) and Quarantined (Lachesis Publishing, 2009). He has more than 30 horror, crime, and science fiction short stories published, and has received extensive professional training in disaster mitigation, forensics, and homicide investigation techniques. His upcoming novels include Apocalypse of the Dead, The Zombie King, Inheritance (all forthcoming from Kensington), and Lost Girl of the Lake (Bad Moon Books).
McKinney will also conduct the class, Writing Modern Horror on Saturday, April 10. In the class, participants will reexamine their characters through in-class writing exercises and by the end of the day, the skeleton of a story will have some real meat on it.
Gemini Ink intern Melinda Gonzalez interviewed McKinney and discussed how he realized he wanted to become a writer, and what frightful projects he’s been working on.
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