Over the past three + years, I’ve come to realize that we have a responsibility as artists to try to create work that can make a positive difference in this world. It is true that writing can be therapeutic, and when I first started out on this path I did write to figure things out, mostly myself. But now I ask myself: Does this work matter? There’s more of an urgency to my writing, more depth, and I see that in much of the writing that comes my way as fiction editor for Little Patuxent Review. South Korean writer and director Bong Joon Ho quoted Martin Scorsese during this year’s Academy Awards: “The most personal is the most creative.” And the most personal is the most political, which is so obvious in his brilliant award winning film Parasite. This year I plan to complete my short story cycle set on the eastern shore of Maryland and hope to publish it; it is my dream that it will shed some light where there is darkness.
