I worked as a criminal appeals attorney in NYC for many years and am now a full-time writer. An amateur competitive ballroom dancer, I write a dance-focused blog, Swan Lake Samba Girl, which has been written about in the Wall Street Journal and by James Wolcott in his Vanity Fair blog. I also write about dance (and occasionally law and/or social justice issues) for HuffPo and several other publications. I'm currently revising my first novel, Swallow, for publication, and am hard at work on my second.
What fuels my creativity? Usually, things that disturb me. Sometimes, things that enthrall me. Why do I write: Because there are stories I need to tell, things I want the world to know about.
Andrei Makine (Dreams of My Russian Summers; Once Upon the River Love); Hemingway; Oscar Hijuelos (Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love); Milan Kundera (Farewell Waltz); Jeffrey Eugenides (Middlesex); Jonathan Ames; Dos Passos; loved All We Ever Wanted Was Everything by Janelle Brown; Junot Diaz (Drown); Mailer (Executioner's Song, though he needed an editor); Didion; Dostoevsky; Richard Wright (Native Son); Steinbeck; Ralph Ellison; Sylvia Plath; early Fay Weldon; E.M. Forster (Howard's End); early Nick Hornby; early Martin Amis; Emily Bronte.
Hi Tonya.
Hi Tonya.