Member Spotlight: Vicky P Pinpin-Feinstein

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? It is an activity that in doing makes me in touch with a part of me I cannot access otherwise. It is the part which encourages, advocates and shares with the world the diverse and complicated angles of being both common and different, simple and complex, and thus the complexity of being human.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? Taking a walk. Sitting down on a chair in front the computer and timing myself not to get up until the timer goes off, and then increasing the time incrementally until I no longer need it and writing flows. Reading a book and highlighting passages and taking notes and pretty soon, I begin to write my own and the creative juices are flowing.

What is your favorite time to write? In the morning or waking up in the middle of the night because a line or two keeps popping in my head and I need to put it down.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? Maxine Kingston once said to me, “you are never too old to write, and even when you think something has been written about, your way of saying it will be different and will be your own once you tackle it.” She gave a talk at NYU which I attended and I approached her afterward and she gave me this advice as I asked her about it.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? Writing at any age or period puts me in a space no one can take away from me. It is always me and my thoughts, ideas, and I always find that it is a good space to be, comforting, cozy, intellectual, and creative all at once. It is a private, unique me time and no one, absolutely no one can really know me or about me when I am in that space.

Vicky Pinpin-Feinstein’s Beyond Fear and Suspicion: The New Americans in Little Ethiopia is out now with Atmosphere Press.