Grace: “I would say my formation began when I was 15. When I was 14, I won 10th place in a writing contest, which is not very high, but I couldn’t go to the award ceremony because it was the same day as my confirmation. After that, I just randomly showed up to the writer’s group that hosted the writing contest and they had no idea what to do with me due to my age. I was paired with my now friend Sarah and she became my mentor, looking over my writing and invited me to be a part of her critique group. This group were like the writers who “raised me”. After about 10 years, the group fizzled out and I found a new writer’s group, but I still keep in touch and swap work with them.”

Grace: “I think fantasy will always be my first love. The thing I love most about fantasy is how it allows us to talk about things that are most real, but in a way that feels safe and suspends our disbelief and our closeness to it so we can look at it more objectively. That’s what I really like about the genre. I primarily write speculative fiction (mostly fantasy and horror) and occasionally realistic fiction.”

Grace: “One of the Wordsmiths (my critique group) went to college for visual art and has made stickers for our group with stupid things we say and one that she made says “Let the story soup simmer” and it has a pot of soup on it. That’s one of my most frequent sayings. Usually, the idea I have comes with an image or a theme or a concept and I just have to let it simmer. Things begin to coalesce and usually when I have a vague outline, setting, or a character then that’s when I begin outlining or drafting, but I really let things percolate. I don’t really “discovery write”.

Grace: “This was actually the first short story that I had written in college and it was one of those pieces that, though I wrote it in 2016, I had a friend enter Carmel this summer and so it became relevant again to my life. When I wrote it, it was more of a thought experiment process, but now it has become more personal to me. The character that came to me first was the sister that entered, but I wanted to tell her story through the eyes of someone else because I think sometimes writing very religious main characters can be alienating to people who don’t have that experience and also hard to write that experience and not make it feel saccharine or too fluffy/imaginary. It’s hard to make it feel concrete in how it feels when you actually have a real interior life. I picked her younger sister because I thought she could be the vehicle for the questions that people might ask when they hear of someone entering religious life and that’s something that’s not in their world view or on their radar. I wanted Lucy to be the voice of the audience and ask those questions. She also helps reconcile someone you have a lot of respect for and feel very fondly toward, despite them doing these things you feel are very irrational, you trust them and you trust they’re being real about it even if you don’t understand what they’re pursuing.”

“It was interesting because I wrote it for a secular class and my professor was Catholic (I only knew because I would see him at mass). In this class, we would send the story to the professor, then he would send it anonymously to the class and everyone would read it, then come to class ready to discuss the story as you (the writer) sat there quietly listening to everyone’s feedback until the end of class when you could respond to their criticism. This story was so controversial in my class. Some felt the sister entering (Cat) was “so selfish” and “abandoning her family”, then my professor posed the question: “Is it selfish when people enter the military?” and everyone responded “No”. He then said, “They’re going off to serve their country, which is considered patriotic. What if she’s going off to serve her God? Is that ok?” It was very cool to see the light click for people. I think a lot of people in the class have never contemplated this scenario until then. I was so surprised at how controversial this piece was! It made me realize the power of story in a way.”

Grace: “I joined my writer’s group, the WordSmiths in 2022. After seeing a need online of more Catholics wanting to connect to other Catholic genre fiction writers, we WordSmiths responded by forming Inkwells & Anvils in 2023. It’s an online writing community and my fellow Wordsmiths and I (there are 8 of us) facilitate the group, which contains members from all over the world. We started with social media, blog posts, etc. trying to accumulate a social media following before anything else, but word of mouth has really been the biggest thing. Our writers wanted a community, so we started a Discord server and it took off from there. We host challenges, guest lectures, and are trying to give our members opportunities for publications so we hosted an anthology last year and are releasing another this year. We hope to eventually have a conference in the future to help our members get together in person. The group welcomes 18+ year old writers.”

Grace: “We host a platform on Discord for Catholic writers to get together, primarily for Catholics who are genre fiction writers because there is a lot of space for people to hang out and write beautiful literary fiction, but there’s not a lot of places that are friendly to people who are deeply Catholics that also write sci-fi, fantasy or horror. We also have some people that write material for TTRPGs (table top role playing games). We have some poets and people who write non-fiction, too. A lot of our writers that are publishing for the first time with us in our anthologies are needing more hand-holding with editing and getting ready for publication, but it’s very important to us. That’s what the community is for- the writers.”

Grace: “It can be so easy to end up in a bubble if you aren’t careful, so try to absorb everything you possibly can- different perspectives, ways of seeing the world, ways of life, etc. Find writers that are better than you. In high school it can be very easy to find a writing group that’s supportive and that’s very important, but you don’t just want support but also criticism. Some writing groups can become or are “hype groups” and that doesn’t make a writer better. It can feel like the blind leading the blind having people review your work that are on the same level as you. You need people better than you to critique your work and help you improve your craft. I was very blessed to have that at a young age because, as I mentioned, my first writing group consisted of members that were 10 years older than me who had so much to teach me. Find people who will challenge you in that same way. Also, handling criticism takes time to learn and is not easy, so be patient with yourself.”