.Writers.on.Writing.
Get to know our authors, the foundation and heart of Yellow Arrow Journal, and what writing means to them through our monthly series.
W.o.W. #41
Andrée Rose Catalfamo
Do you prefer handwriting or typing?
Each of these kinesthetic acts stimulates a different part of my brain. I handwrite in my journal, especially when I’m trying to break through with an idea or when I’m feeling stuck. I also handwrite first drafts of poetry. I type when I am drafting or revising. I feel like handwriting is more circuitous and flowing, and typing is more direct.
What does your inner writing voice tell you?
Be honest. Tell the truth. Don’t be afraid. Do I need that comma?
Describe an early experience where you learned that language has power.
I spent my preschool years in Highlandtown, East Baltimore, where my grandmother would babysit me while my parents worked. From the time I was old enough to sit on her lap, Grandmom would read to me. I remember the colorful, hard cardboard covers of the Golden Books she’d buy and read, time and again. Soon, I could read them for myself, and then Grandmom started taking me to the Enoch Pratt Free Library branch on Eastern Avenue. It wasn’t long before I realized that books had the power take me anywhere I wanted to go. I was especially attracted to any and every story book that had a foreign locale or where the protagonists were embarking on a trip. I’d check out books 10 at a time and beg to go back to the library two or three times a week. And not too long after that, I started writing and illustrating my own stories, which all of my friends in school wanted to read because I’d put kissing scenes in them. I realized then that as a writer, I had the power to make people feel things.
Andrée Rose Catalfamo is a writer and instructor working in creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. Although she holds both a doctorate and a master’s degree in education, last year she returned to Wilkes University to begin a masters in creative writing. Somehow, she is managing to teach rhetoric and composition at SUNY Cortland while pursuing her studies and working on a memoir. A Baltimore native, Andrée misses Fells Point, crabcakes, and the Visionary Art Museum, as well as her family and friends. She lives happily with her husband, the poet Burt Myers, in Binghamton, New York. Her piece “Blooms” was included in Yellow Arrow Journal, Vol. V, No. 2, HOME.
Andrée recently had a chapter appear in A Lovely Place, A Fighting Place, A Charmer: The Baltimore Anthology (2022, Belt Publishing), edited by Gary M. Almeter and Rafael Alvarez.