Meet Frances Gossen

I can’t remember the first time I used writing as a form of creative expression, but by the time I entered middle school, I had already discovered an easy love of poetry. Perhaps it was the influence of my early years as a theater kid and young love affair with Shakespeare, but using descriptive language to encapsulate intense to me, unnoticed to others experiences greatly appealed to me.

I still remember some of those early works: seeing an otter off the docks of Prince Edward Island, the sensation of waking up from a dream. The way letters, syllables, syntax, and stanzas could express patterns of beautiful meaning fascinated me as did the idea of treating language as an equation not to cheapen but expand understanding.

Unsurprisingly, I went on to obtain an English degree from Boston University where I spent two years as chief poetic editor for Clarion literary magazine and worked as an copy editor for Pen and Anvil press both before and after graduation. My writing grew as well as I began to experiment more with prose and fiction, especially world building.

In my late teens, I developed my first fantasy world, which now has its own phonetic alphabet, detailed trade routes, five distinct cultural traditions, and three storylines that will eventually become series, although I’m only about one hundred scattered pages into the first book.

During my twenties, I completed my first collection of poetry, Conversations about the Weather, as well as early drafts of a collection of short stories tentatively called Rose’a’sharn, which explored the line between magical realism and fantasy. Currently, I’m developing a new collection of science fiction shorts as a fun experiment in a different kind of world building, and particularly to work on dialogue and concise storytelling. Regardless of the project, I always have more ideas and inspiration than time to write them down.

— Frances Gossen