hika.

What writers/artists find yourself looking to for inspiration? How do you feel they inspire your work?

Oh, that’s a good question.I feel like I can’t think of a particular author that really inspires me. But I definitely read a lot of poetry and I love Edgar Allan Poe, I’d say that he’s somebody who I very much look to for [inspiration] with my poetry and stuff like that. But I just love reading, of course, a lot of books and poems, but I think that Edgar Allan Poe is pretty much the only person that comes to mind. But I know there are definitely a lot of other artists and authors out there. I also listen to a lot of music. I think music really inspires my writing. I will pick a song or a playlist or a specific genre to listen to while I’m writing, and that really helps me get into them.

Is there a specific aspect of Edgar Allan Poe’s writing that you feel that you synthesize into your writing or you’re thinking about as you write?

I think it’s the eeriness of it. I love writing psychological horror. It’s one of my favorite genres to read and to write. And I think that Poe’s poetry in general is very captivating to me, not only because it has that eeriness aspect to it, which I find very intriguing, but also the rhythm of his poems. I find the rhyming very enchanting. I just get like, it’s just so good. 

Yeah, Annabel Lee was one of the first poems I ever read.

Yeah, that’s my favorite poem. I just reread that one over and over and over again, because the rhyming the rhythm—it’s so good. It’s addicting.

What’s your dream writing project to work on? Given infinite resources and time, what would you create?

I would definitely want to write a novel. I’ve been curious in all the writing for years now. And I’ve tried it. But I feel like timewise it’s been difficult; inspiration-wise, it’s also been difficult. I have a hard time dedicating myself to really, really big projects like that. So I feel that if I had infinite resources, infinite time, and infinite inspiration as well, then it would be just my dream to sit down and just write a novel. I’m gonna do it one day, hopefully. But I gotta find that inspiration to do it.

Where did your interest in writing first start?

I’ve always been interested in writing. I’ve always loved to write. But I remember one moment in particular. One of my favorite books is The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, and that, I remember reading that book for the first time when I was in middle school, and it had such an impact on me. I feel like it was the writing style, and also the way at which writing was emphasized within the novel as being a crucial way of really thriving and getting through life. And I remember reading that in middle school, and after reading that book, it changed my whole perspective. I was like, Oh my gosh, I need to write. Because I did it before, but I feel like after reading that novel—the impactfulness of  Zusak’s writing and the way that he explained the importance of writing throughout the novel—it was just such a meaningful book to me. I feel like that put into perspective that this is something I love, and this is something I want to continue doing for the rest of my life.

How would you describe your artistic voice/who you are as a writer? What subject matter and themes are you most concerned with in your writing? How has this changed over time? 

It definitely varies. In my writing, it’s hard to come up with one particular theme. I feel like my writing is very spontaneous. I just come up with an idea and I just very much just start writing it and they are usually vastly different. But I’d say a few things that I somewhat consistently express within my writing are mental health, and also LGBTQ+ issues and stuff like that. So I think those are two themes. And I know that I write a lot about death and love—that’s so broad, but just like being human and the messiness of life. But yeah, I definitely need to think about this longer. 

Do you have a piece of writing that you are most proud of?

I know that I do. But I feel like that whenever I think about this question, it always changes. There’s some writing that I’ve done years ago that I still to this day hold very close to my heart. [But I’m proud of] almost every new piece that I write, not all of them, but the more that I write, the more I like my work. I guess I was proud of myself. I managed to write a huge chunk of a novel that I’ve been working on for years. And I was very proud of that—not of the writing necessarily, because the writing was not good, but just the fact that I was able to sit down and do a project of that length, which I had never done before. 

Could you tell us more about that novel?

It’s something I keep on picking up and dropping. It’s a science fiction novel. I’ve been dabbling more in science fiction. I always love that genre—not reading it, per se, but I love writing it. And [the novel] was somewhat about the themes I was talking about before: mostly had to do with relationships and mental health, and those overall broad themes without getting too into the detail of it. It’s definitely been sitting in my brain for a long time now, and I’m hoping I can get back to it. If I want, maybe I will. But I don’t know. I’ve tried to write it multiple times, but it hasn’t really stuck. 

What was the inspiration behind this piece? Was there any specific event or experience that was the catalyst for the writing of it?

I think that this was a very spontaneous piece. But I wrote it about a year ago, around Christmas. It’s very weird time in my life. And I used to always keep my bedroom door open. I could not have it close, [or else] I feel suffocated and trapped in my room. And then one night, I just decided to close it. And now I need to shut my bedroom door. I had always had my door open for 17 years of my life, and then all of a sudden, one day I was like, I need to have it shut. And I don’t really know why. But then I was thinking about it a lot—thinking about it enough to write a little piece about it. Also wondering, as the reasons to why I just randomly decided to shut the door to my room. Long story short, I wondered if it was a mental health thing.  I needed a change in my environment. I don’t really know how to explain this piece, but that was like pretty much the overall: one night I decided to close my bedroom door and didn’t know why I decided to do it, and then I just wrote this work on it.

What was the process of writing this piece like? 

[The period when I was writing this piece] was a good time. I was just poetry-crazed—chugging out poetry every single day. All the free time that I had in school, I was just writing poetry. And this was just one of those pieces that got lost in all the other poetry that I was writing. But it is a more personal piece about a personal experience, which I don’t usually write about too much. And I liked it. And that’s about it, I just wrote it spontaneously. When I write, I don’t usually stop and think of a process, I usually just go for it. And this was definitely one of those pieces. So yeah, it’s just very much a spontaneous piece about my life.

How does this piece fit into your larger body of work? Is its style, themes, or content in line with your typical writing, or is it an exception? In what ways?

I would say it’s more of an exception. I feel like with a lot of the poetry I write, I usually don’t write about specific personal experiences that have happened to me. But I would say that it probably does align with I the themes or the genre, like the psychological side of the mind. Like, why you do the things that you do. Another theme that I like to include in my work is why people do certain things. And sometimes you don’t have an answer, and sometimes you do, and you’ll never really know. [The story] was definitely different because like I said, it was based on a personal experience. A lot of my poetry isn’t and a lot of my novel writing isn’t: they mostly have their own characters and other world-building and stuff like that. But This piece specifically was more so about a personal experience—I was the narrator of it. So yeah, I would say that was the piece definitely stuck out from a lot of my other work.

“The Scariest of Them All” was the winner of the Hika spooky stories contest. Rather than take a typical approach to a ghost story, your story subverts that, creating a narrative that is melancholy and even a bit philosophical. This in part is what drew the Hika staff to your story so much. Can you talk more about your choice to take this approach? How do you feel that The Scariest of Them All reflects what you think the essence of fear is?

I feel like it had to do with my childhood fears. Like you know, just weird thoughts that I had. I don’t know if this is universal or not, but I always think, if I’m in a hotel, and because I always had my door open a robber can come in, kind of like what I wrote. And then they’d be the first to enter my room and then I’d be the first to die or whatever. Same thing if there was a fire. Just silly things that wouldn’t necessarily happen on your average day. But they are things that I definitely had fears of as a kid and still, I never shut my bedroom door even though I had those fears. And I think that it mostly had to do with the fact that when I kept my door shut I felt suffocated, and I was always worried that if there was something in my room then I wouldn’t be able to escape easily. Yeah, I was a scared child. I had a lot of childhood fears, so I feel like when I first started writing, it mostly had to do with those irrational childhood fears. But then I was also thinking, like the last line [of the piece], that maybe I was more scared of what’s inside than what was outside. It’s that realization that when you get older you turn into your own worst enemy, and that the things that I feared as a kid that are not necessarily fears anymore. So now it’s mostly just fearing myself. It goes back to the idea of mental health—being afraid of thoughts that you have and of what you could do yourself. As you get older, I feel like at least for me, I became scared of myself compared to a lot of other things. Like I was just my worst enemy.

What are your thoughts on the connection between writing and publishing? Do you feel that publishing work is an essential part of the writing process?

I am honestly not familiar with the publishing process at all. I’ve been writing for a long time, but I have never really been introduced to the publishing process or the editing process. I feel like with all the writing that I’ve done, I’ve never really thought about it being published, even though I want it to be published, hopefully, one day. I know there are self-published authors too, and you can totally be successful doing that. But honestly, I think for me, the main thing of publishing is obviously just getting your name out there, especially if you get into a big publishing company. But I don’t really know the process of publishing. I’m hoping to get involved in Sunset Press so I can learn more about the editing and publishing process. But that’s something I’m honestly pretty oblivious about. So I’m hoping to get more involved with the publishing process at Kenyon so that in the future, I’ll be more prepared if I do want to publish my work. Like, how should I approach this, and who should I contact and stuff like that. 

What/who motivates you to write? Or: is there something specific that drives your urge to write?

It’s just like, I love to do it. And also, I’m very much inspired by the people around me. Especially being at Kenyon and seeing all these people pursuing their passion in creative writing has definitely made me more passionate about it, because I’m also surrounded by passionate people. And it also made me feel more inspired. And also, I feel like whenever I read a good book or watch a good movie, or listen to a good song, it always drives me forward even more, because it’s like, I can do that or that’s what I want my future to look like. I’m very proud that I’m a part of this creative writing community. Because I value creative writing a lot, and whenever I see a work that has just beautiful writing, it just really speaks to me, and it makes me want to keep on going because it’s something that I love. 

What are your writing aspirations and/or where do you see your writing taking you in the future?

I’m really hoping to be a novel writer in the future. I think that’s about it. I know for a fact that I want to keep writing in my life. And yeah, publishing a novel is definitely one of my biggest reasonable goals currently. But I’m also hoping to be a writer, maybe for TV shows, or maybe even plays. I definitely want to get a job involved in the creative community. I think it’ll be more specific to the art community. A lot of my studio art and a lot of my artworks include writing or based on a poem. I just love to include writing in my artwork as well. So I feel like they’re very intertwined. So I’m really hoping to combine them in the future and still write. I still want to publish a novel, and also to use my art as leverage for my creative writing features. 

Can you talk a little more about your art? 

I’m very much a fan of comic writing and graphic novels. It’s something that I really want to do in the future. I feel like my artwork is definitely inspired by my writing and vice versa. For me, they’re just extremely intertwined Not that I see them as the same thing, but my process of creative writing is very similar to my process of creating art. Currently, I’m gonna major in English with an emphasis in creative writing, but I’m also thinking about majoring in studio art. So in the future, I’m very curious to see what I’ll do with those two combined. I really like mashing a bunch of different artistic mediums together. It’s my favorite thing to do. And then I really want to be a storyboard artist in the future as well. It’s my dream. Or maybe work on writing TV shows and movies like I was saying before as well.

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Benjamin’s story “The Scariest of Them All” will be published in this year’s issue of Hika, and appeared in the Hika Fall Preview.