KS is one of those rare voices you feel lucky enough to know. While they’re telling you all about their favorite writers, you become enamored with the fact that you’re listening to one of YOUR favorite writers tell you what’s important to them, like friends do. It’s shocking to realize that someone you can legit say you “fan girl” over is someone you also get to call a friend.
It’s happened a few times when I’ve come across someone and knew without a shadow of a doubt they were meant to be a part of my life. KS is one of those amazing writers. Recently I asked my friends in Writers and Editors of Color, to fill out this questionnaire, so I could post their answers on this website, to show you who they are. There are some truly great writers in this group and KS is definitely at the top of my “I need to meet this person” list.
She is a fearless, powerful Black voice in America, during a time when many people would prefer women like KS remain silent. She refuses to do so, rebelling against who Black women are supposed to be, by forging her own path and showing the world she’s got two middle fingers for anyone who will stomp in her way.
KS is the kind of teacher we all need in our lives and as I’ve said, I am truly honored that simple-minded me, gets to call her friend.
Name*
KS Hernandez
What Kind of Writing Do You Do?*
I’m a writer of poetry, fiction, memoirs, and essays.
What’s Your Writing Style?*
My writing style has evolved since I began to write poetry a few years ago from the morose thriller suspense to more literary, introspective work. Humor and Satire has always found its way into nearly everything I write, especially in my fiction, and when that happens, I allow it to have its place, organically.
I try to honor the school of Toni Morrison where an interrogation of the work gives me a heightened awareness of classical literature while directing my voice to whom it is intended, without extraneous explanations. Those falling outside of that audience just have to figure it out, and that can be fun.
What are three things you’ve learned since becoming a writer?*
I’ve learned that writing is most definitely my calling, that I’m pretty good at it, and that I have a whole hellava lot more to learn.
Where Do You Want Your Work to Take You?*
I hope my work takes me all over the world, to see every glorious earthscape imaginable. I want to speak to the mystics and shaman in New Zealand and Australia to ask them questions about my ancestors. I want to meet Alice Walker, in person, to hug her tightly, if she will allow it, and thank her for being unconventional, a disruptor, and just heretical enough to free something in me as a young woman. Many more places and the piece de resistance, Sweden.
Who are some of your favorite writers that people may not know about?
DaMaris Hill, Margaret Walker, Cole Arthur Bailey, Landon Godfrey, Treva B. Lindsey, Ebony Stewart, Delores Phillips, Dr. Brenda Greene, Chasity Gunn, Suzanne Wiltz, Carmin Wong, Toni Blackman, Sunni Patterson, Nada Chehade, Donna Lynne-Griggs, Nina Brewton, Crystal Wilkinson, Marlon Weems, Talynn Kel, Miriam Calleja Shaw, Bernice McFadden, Brian Gilmore, and I will break this shit naming folks!!
How did you choose writing as a craft? Or did Writing choose you?*
Writing chose me. I could always tell a good story, from the time that I was a child and had all of my classmates on the edge of their seats with a story about stolen apples and the illogical tales of my school day told to my mother. It would be many years before I would learn that that is an important skill.
Spend some time going through your work, and find three pieces you’d really like folks to read for the first time, or again.
Zora’s Blues, That One Black Kid, Remember in the 2023 Winter Killens Review of Arts and Letters when it becomes available.
You can follow KS on Twitter and Medium
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall
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