Charlie R. North
What’s your genre?
Poetry
Are you published?
Traditional publisher
What inspired you to become a writer?
During my first year of high school, I found the magic of poetry. It works as the thread that stitches together emotion, experience, time, and place, connecting the writer with the reader. Who wouldn’t want to share a magic like that?
What author do you admire and how have they inspired your writing?
Naming a favorite author feels impossible, as l appreciate so many of them. However, when I first read Sylvia Plath’s Ariel, I was captivated. How Plath used imagery, metaphor, and symbolism in her poems mesmerized me. She was mysterious and yet transparent, complex, and yet she confessed everything. Her work required abstract thinking and pushed me as both reader and writer. Because of her work, I now research words, places, anatomy, nature, and everything in between until I find the best artifacts for my writing. My curiosity about the world grew, and with it, so did my poems.
Name three of your favorite books and their authors
Ariel by Sylvia Plath
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Wintering by Katherine May
What’s one thing readers should know about you?
I hope I never stop wanting to learn or that I lose the desire to submerge myself in experience.
What one piece of advice would you give to a budding writer?
Everything I would tell a budding writer is cliché and would make every word-nerd reading this cringe (me included). I can’t give anyone advice, but what I can share is a sliver of my experience: always have something to write with.
Author Bio
Charlie R. North grew up in a small Montana town, discovering her love for poetry early on. Now living in Iowa, she and her husband have raised their family there. A graduate student at Iowa State University, Charlie is working toward a degree in English literature. Her poem “Battered Secrets” was a top finalist in Wingless Dreamer’s Calling the Beginning anthology. She has been published in Poet’s Choice, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, and won Lyrical Iowa’s 2022 First Time Entrant Award. Her work was also recently featured in The Cities of the Plains An Anthology of Iowa Artists and Poets, published by Grand View University.
