For the third installment of our author interview series, EIC Vasili sat down with Anna Lux, a contributing poet to TUR, and a relative newcomer to the Wilmington community, to talk about her experience adapting to the city, and her process as a poet.

TUR: How long have you lived in the Wilmington area, and what is your familiarity with the Cape Fear?

Anna: I just moved here around a year ago, in July of last year, after I graduated from the University of Alabama. I needed somewhere to go after I graduated, and I didn’t want to move back home, and I have a friend that lived out here, and she was like, “Come live out by the beach!” And I was like, “OK!” So we found this shitty little apartment, and now we’re just living out here! So I’m not super familiar with it all—it’s just been a process of finding more people with similar interests and backgrounds. I’m more introverted, so I’m glad that I have an extroverted friend to help me meet people.

TUR: How would you describe your experience living as a queer person in this community so far?

ANNA: It’s definitely different from where I was going to school. I feel like Alabama has such a specific stereotype for being less accepting, and because of that, there’s a very strong queer subculture there that people don’t really realize. The city of Birmingham is like a powerhouse for the LGBTQ community, which was super cool to be around, and having those pockets of that culture at the university was something I was not expecting. And I haven’t really found the same thing here, even though Wilmington is a university city. Of course, I’m not going to school here or anything, so I’ve found it harder to find people, but it’s definitely different.

TUR: It’s been my experience, and that of some folks I’Ve spoken to recently, that the queer community in Wilmington is kind of decentralized, and there’s not really those spaces that we really occupy where the culture really comes out.

ANNA: Yes! Yeah, and there are places where you can tell there’s a threshold of it, but yeah, my friend and I were looking for events, and there were maybe like one or two pride events for the next six months, and that was kind of disappointing.

TUR: So how have you found yourself exploring the queer community around here most frequently so far?

ANNA: I really only started openly exploring my queer identity in college, so it is kind of a newer aspect of my life and my social life that’s taken me some time to really lean into. And I was able to do that with my friend group in college, which was super neurodivergent and queer and offered this open space for me to really explore that. So since I’ve moved here, it’s been a primary struggle for me to continue to openly embrace that in the same ways I was in Tuscaloosa, and one of the main things is definitely the differences in culture here. My automatic reaction is to try to blend, especially when you first move to a place—so when I was at school, I was much more outwardly queer, and since I’ve moved here, it’s been a more repressed element. So it’s just been a process of making friends I’m comfortable with to try to lean into that more.

TUR: I’m curious about that direct comparison between your community in Birmingham and your community here. What did your community in Alabama have that you aren’t seeing in Wilmington, in terms of those spaces that are openly and evidently queer? Were there more of those zones in Birmingham than in Wilmington?

ANNA: Definitely—more gay bars, and more queer spaces that were more obviously for us as people. Maybe it’s because I haven't lived here long enough yet that it’s not as obvious. I think also the contrast of having a culture of the stereotypical Alabama Rush and Greek Life and stuff, it was more visible because there was a push for a more direct counter-culture. Sorry, I feel like this is super convoluted—Like I’m brain vomiting right now [laughs].

TUR: It’s all good. Speak your mind!

ANNA: To be clear, I haven’t really put a lot of direct effort into finding it yet. I feel like it’s definitely because I haven’t lived here that long that I haven’t really found it yet. But even when you go on dating apps and stuff, it feels like the queer community in general just isn’t as large here.

TUR: I would not blame yourself totally for not finding it. We have Ibiza, of course, and groups like Stonewall Sports, but the perspective that I’ve gotten from some older queers that I’m in circles with is that the community was once very large, and then there was a dip that it's never really come back from. So, right now at least, for a lot of people the community is very decentralized. So I wouldn’t say it's just a lack of effort on your part that’s prevented you from finding it.

ANNA: Thank you for saying that!

TUR: So talking about your poetry and your artistry now, how would you say your identity as a queer person informs your writing, and what aspects of your experience do you find yourself exploring most often—especially for someone for whom it’s a newer aspect of your identity. How did that understanding evolve in your work?

ANNA: It’s definitely been a major outlet for me to explore my identity and embrace it as an individual. I experienced a huge gender crisis in college, and that was very very hard, experiencing that dysphoria. And my writing provided a huge outlet for me to help process what I was going through and put my emotions into a form. I think whenever you’re experiencing any sort of emotional turbulence, creating art out of it is such a huge relieving factor. Tangibly creating something from that distress is something so beautiful that provides such relief to me, and now that that’s not such a primary disfunction in my life, to be able to reflect on those experiences is something that I’m so grateful that I have proof of—proof that I went through that.

TUR: On a craft level, I was really impressed by the cumulative nature of your imagery. Whenever I start one of your poems, it's like I’m kicking a snowball down a hill—it just goes on and gets bigger. Is that something that you notice in your work yourself? How mindful of a decision is that to create that momentum in your work?

ANNA: I think it’s just an intuitive process that occurs. When I start a poem, it’s very much just like—what I said earlier—brain vomit. Just whatever comes out and what moments strike me as artistic or poetic or important, just like, little niche moments, and as I do gain that momentum as I’m writing, it comes out quicker and quicker. How you read it is probably how I experience it as I’m writing, if that makes sense; it’s definitely a sort of automatic process.

TUR: I really got that sense of immediacy—once they start, they don’t really take a breath, and I thought they were gripping in that way.

ANNA: Thank you!

TUR: So what kind of writing do you typically find yourself doing now? Are you mainly a poet, or do you dabble in other genres?

ANNA: I would consider myself a poet, but I do longer prose and flash sometimes, and I’ve dabbled in short stories. I’ve have issues validating myself as a writer because I’m primarily a poet and I don’t try my hand as much at longer-form fiction. I feel like every writer has this sense of, “Oh, I need to write a book eventually,” so I've tried to branch out a bit, but I feel the most satisfaction out of writing poetry.

TUR: I get that imposter syndrome too—I’m primarily a fiction writer, so I have it in kind of the opposite direction. I’m like, “All my friends are poets and they’re so great and what they’re doing with language is so incredible and here I am like, ‘He walked over, he picked something up, he did this…’” Just, like, artless. [laughs]

ANNA: No! I’m so jealous of that—when I’m writing long form, that momentum we talked about is just not there; it’s slow, and it takes mastery to be able to have that patience with it. There’s a quote about how poets stereotypically have the most issues because they have these emotions, and they shovel the emotions into a small piece of work, so the emotion is never really resolved. Whereas when you’re writing a longer piece of fiction, you have an entire story or novel to explore and resolve those emotions.

TUR: I think I agree with that—to me, poetry in a lot of cases is focused more on the experience of an emotional moment, and not necessarily providing closure. And based on your work, that’s what it seems like you’re occupied by as a poet too.

ANNA: Yeah, exactly!

TUR: So, going back a bit, what do you think the queer community in Wilmington needs or is missing, and what do you as a queer artist need right now?

ANNA: I think just opportunity! Opportunities, and events, and tangible gatherings, and meetups—and exactly what you’re doing now, outlets for our voices. Community, whether that’s virtual or, hopefully, in-person, where we can meet each other in platonic ways. I feel like, to be a part of that community, you have to have lived here a while or to be a part of certain social circles.

TUR: I think that in Wilmington, we’re lucky in the sense that a lot of places are really accepting. I wouldn’t call Wilmington necessarily a bigoted city in that regard. When we have Pride, we take over a whole block of downtown, and there are flags and balloons and stuff everywhere, and there’s events all over the place, but it really does kind of just go away. And it doesn’t become unfriendly, but it becomes a lot less visible. So I think that's what creates the feeling that there is a lack of community here—it’s not that there is one, but there’s a lack of that visibility outside of Pride Month.

ANNA: And I think specifically, you creating an outlet for queer artists is so important! Even just being a writer and a poet, especially for someone who didn't go to school here, it’s been hard to find communities to explore that and share that art as well, whether that’s sharing poetry or book clubs or something, it’s been hard to find an outlet for that. So you’re a trailblazer in that regard.

TUR: [Laughs] Thank you!