‘There is no secret writer coronation ceremony’: Yohanca Delgado Shares Writing Tips and Her Favorite Places in D.C.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a writer in possession of a ‘good’ Twitter account, must be in want of another writer friend, especially if both are Latinas living in the DMV area. As Jane Austen-ish as it sounds, Yohanca Delgado and I met through Twitter. We probably followed each other because we had literary circles in common, and we briefly met during a special edition of Lit on H St Book Club featuring Angie Cruz (make sure to check it out is led by Lupita Reads). I have been enjoying following her writing journey for the last two years –nevertheless, her journey started way before that — and now it’s your turn to know her too!
The multilingual writer is originally from New York and has been living in the D.C. area on and off. She is a first-generation child of immigrants from Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Delgado studied languages and political science in college and has traveled everywhere. “I wandered the world a bit and worked a lot of different jobs before deciding to pursue an MFA,” Delgado says. She earned an MFA in creative writing from American University and has received fellowship support from different foundations.
Delgado’s stories, often sprinkled with her native language Spanish, explore themes of grief, memory, language, among others. They have been published in the anthology Furious Gravity: DC Women Artists, Michigan Quarterly Review, STORY, just to name a few. The author recently published “Our Language” in one of her dream magazines A Public Space.
“The Rat”, a story set in New York about Samanta, a knife saleswoman, who lets a customer cut her wrist to get rid of her grief, is available for purchase in One Story where you can also read an excerpt. In case you are wondering, yes, a rat appears in the story and follows Samanta everywhere she goes, mimicking the grief in her soul.
Delgado is currently working on a short story collection and a novel. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram @yodelnyc and find out more about her writing in the interview below. https://yohanca.com/
Can you tell us a bit more about yourself?
When I graduated from college, I moved here [D.C. area] and worked as a security assessment analyst. My job made it possible for me to live and work in France, Egypt, and Brazil, which was wonderful. After that, my partner’s work made it possible for me to live and work in Ukraine and Lithuania, where I did everything from editing to copywriting, voice-overs to food reviews — all in addition to jobs at the US Embassies in those countries.
What do you wish you’d known as a beginning writer?
I still feel like a beginner writer — there’s so much I don’t know! But I wish I hadn’t waited so long to give myself permission to write seriously. It turns out that there is no secret writer coronation ceremony — there’s only the moment when you embrace the fact that you feel most like yourself when you are alone somewhere, working shit out on the page.
What was your favorite part of getting your MFA?
I thrive on external deadlines, feedback, and structure, so having a course of study did wonders for me, and it forced me to clear the mental space I needed to generate new work. I worked a lot of other jobs and dreamed a lot, and waited a long time for the right moment to make this leap, financially and mentally. For me, the MFA experience was life-changing.
But when people say you don’t need an MFA, they’re right. Still, it’s a gift to have that time and that space, especially if you’re able to shift into freelance or part-time work, as I did.
I was also extraordinarily lucky to find mentors at American University who made me feel that anything was possible. The writing workshop is such a vulnerable and humbling space. I’m thankful for the many lifelong friendships I found there.
What are your favorite places in D.C. to write or find inspiration?
I don’t get out much, to be honest, and I didn’t get out much before the COVID-19 shutdown either! But the National Museum of Women in the Arts is one of my favorite places in DC. It’s small in a way that feels welcoming, and they host a lot of wonderful literary events.
When I want to feel awe, I wander the National Mall. I love the grand architecture of the DC metro. As a New Yorker, I can’t get over it. There’s something so beautiful to me about the majesty and scale of it –all in a functional service that we get to use and experience every day (or at least we did!).
Tell us about your process or experience participating in the anthology: Furious Gravity: Grace & Gravity Volume IX.
I talked about it a bit here, in a conversation with the amazing Melissa Scholes Young on the Kojo Namdi Show. I got to see how the book was put together in Melissa’s literary lab, a class called Literary Editing and Publishing at AU. Melissa structured the class so that we were able to learn about every aspect of the publishing process: from editing to formatting, from book cover design to print costs, from marketing to placing the books in stores. It was one of my favorite classes at AU, and it culminated in a reading to launch the 2018 anthology, Grace and Darkness, which our class organized. It was so cool to see a book grow from an idea to something you could buy at a bookstore!
Two years later, I jumped at the opportunity to submit a story to the new edition, Furious Gravity. It was so much fun to see the current students do the work I had done with my classmates two years ago, to promote the book and highlight the contributors. And though there could be no big launch in-person party, the release could not have come at a better time. The world felt — even then — like it was falling apart in a million different ways. But the day I received my copy book (thank you, Politics and Prose!), I felt so much hope. Here in my hands was this tangible reminder of the fierce loyalty and community that has long existed in DMV.
If you could share one or two writing tips, what would they be?
Technique and craft should be applied in service of your unique perspective — not the other way around. It’s tempting to try to sound like other writers or to try to contort your writing so that it looks like what you think editors want.
I’m trying to teach myself that. What makes me weird and drives my curiosity — that’s my unique offering. That’s what I’m trying to bring to the page. Craft will help me refine it and make it inviting to a reader, but I have to know what I’m trying to say or what I’m trying to ask first.
How does your literary community usually look like [pre-pandemic]? And how does it look like now [in the pandemic]?
I tend to stay friends with people I workshop with. Trust and intimacy can develop very quickly in a workshop if you are showing up generously and authentically as a reader and a writer. Those friends are the core of my writing community and who I exchange work with. And the lockdown has sparked some writing exchanges that have helped keep me going when I needed it most.
Where else can we read your work?
My fiction has previously appeared in STORY, the inaugural issue of Michigan Quarterly Review Mixtapes, Nightmare, and, of course, in the wonderful Furious Gravity anthology, edited by Melissa Scholes Young. I’ve got a couple of stories coming out in the next few months, fingers crossed. I try to collect links on my website: Yohanca.com
Who are your favorite authors?
I could give a different list every day of the year because I love so many kinds of narratives and styles. Today, I will say the fiction favorites are Edward P. Jones, Sandra Cisneros, Toni Morrison, Kathryn Davis, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
What are you currently reading?
I’ve just finished reading the collected stories of Leonora Carrington, which I adore. Last month, I read Severance, which is as brilliant as everyone says and also a bad idea to read in a pandemic. I read Timefulness, which is a narrative nonfiction book written by geologist Marcia Bjornerud. It’s both an introduction to basic geology and an absolutely gorgeous meditation on time; it juxtaposes the planetary timescale to our myopic, human understanding of time. Reading it during the shutdown soothed me on an existential level.
Currently, I’m rereading Hanif Abdurraqib’s A Fortune For Your Disaster, the new Susanna Clarke, Piranesi, and Naima Coster’s forthcoming novel What’s Mine and Yours.
You can find more about Yohanca’s reads here: https://bookshop.org/shop/yohanca
