Ask the Writer: Nancy Lynée Woo

an interview with Jen Knox

Nancy Woo

Jen Knox (JK): Hi, Nancy! Thanks for taking some time with Unleash. We were thrilled to share your poetry with our writers. Can you tell us a little about your journey as a writer?

Nancy Woo (NW): Hi Jen. Thanks for your interest in my work! I started writing poems when I was about 8 years old, then I wrote feverishly with much angst as a teenager, and I eventually found a thriving poetry community after college in my city of Long Beach, California. In 2015, I received the PEN America Emerging Voices fellowship, which was instrumental in preparing me for a literary career. I finished my MFA in 2021 and published my first full-length book this year.

JK: What is the best piece of advice you've received as a creative person?

NW: Write every day. When I was in the Emerging Voices fellowship, this is the #1 piece of advice that most of our visiting authors would share with us. I don’t always achieve actual writing every day, but I live my life as a writer every day, which means I am always doing something related to my writing or writing projects, such as reading, editing, marketing, or walking and thinking. Everything I encounter contributes to my understanding of the world, which informs my writing.

JK: Please share with us one (or a few) of your favorite lines, either from your own work or someone else's work, and explain what strikes you about the passage.

NW: I love Mary Oliver’s ending lines “Whoever you are, no matter how lonely / the world offers itself to your imagination, / calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - / over and over announcing your place / in the family of things” from her poem “Wild Geese.” I even borrowed the phrase “family of things” in one of my own poems. What strikes me about it is that it is so declaratively inclusive. Everyone is welcome in this world, she seems to be saying, even when we feel we do not belong to it. I have often felt I did not belong to this world, and these lines tell me differently. They tell me I have a place here, that I am warmly welcomed as a piece of a larger puzzle. I also find refuge in nature, so it really speaks to me.

JK: How did you find your first publication? Was it everything you dreamed it’d be?

NW: I don’t remember exactly how I found them, but my first publication was at the Camel Saloon, a now-defunct literary blog. It was very exciting to have a complete stranger decide they liked my work enough to publish it. I received that publication fairly quickly after sending out my very first batch of poems, so it was very encouraging.

JK: What are you working on next, and where can our readers connect with you?

NW: Right now, I am working on a second book. It’s still in development, but it’s heavily influenced by my daily nature walk to one of my favorite places, the Colorado Lagoon. It’s about a mile from my house, so I walk there almost every day with my dog. I live in a very urban setting so I consider myself lucky that I have a natural space so close. Being near the water, watching the birds, and connecting with nature is so very healing for me. I’ve been taking poetic “field notes” about my observations, both internally and externally, in response to the world around and inside me. Right now, I’m exploring the idea of what it means to be living in a time of rapid climate change, and so my field notes often approach my personal reactions to the changing world around me, such as extreme heat and flood alerts. Southern California was recently hit by a hurricane, which is wild. Luckily, it was mild, but still – Southern California is not really supposed to have hurricanes. So I write about my lived experiences in these turbulent times.

I would love to connect. Please find me on Instagram as @fancifulnance!

About the poet: Nancy Lynée Woo is a poet, imagination enthusiast, and eco-activist who harbors a wild love for the natural world. Her debut poetry collection is I’d Rather Be Lightning (GASHER Press, 2023). Nancy is a 2023 recipient of the California Creative Corps grant, and was a 2015 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow. She has received additional fellowships from Artists at Work, Arts Council for Long Beach, California Center for the Book, Idyllwild Writers Week and Literary Women. Her work has been published in Tupelo Quarterly, Stirring, Radar Poetry, and others. Nancy is the founder of the community-based poetry workshop Surprise the Line. She believes in the power of the arts to bring people together. Her degrees are in sociology and creative writing from UC Santa Cruz and Antioch University LA. Find her cavorting around Long Beach (Tongva land) in California, and on social media @fancifulnance.