Interview With Adara Dobson

Abigail Bobst

Okay, centering this around the discussion for Botticelli: You recently won two of the Creative Writing Awards. You got runner-up in poetry for Blue-Eyed Baby, and you got first place in prose for In Spades. 

Adara Dobson

I did. I’m very excited about it. 

Abigail Bobst

It’s very cool. So we just wanted to ask you a few questions about what your experience was like…because both of your pieces – Blue-Eyed Baby and In Spades – are going to be featured in our issue of Botticelli when it comes out in May. So if you could just give a pitch of what to expect from either those specific stories or what to expect from your writing style. Because I think your writing style is very whimsical and fun and visceral. I like it a lot. 

Adara Dobson

I don’t know if I’ve ever had my writing style described as ‘whimsical’, considering I write such sad stuff, but thank you for saying that. Both of the pieces are very family-centered…I grew up for the first 15 years of my life with a single mom, and as most people that have that happen to them, I have a fairly complicated relationship with her and the rest of my family. Blue-Eyed Baby is a very short piece. It’s the shortest thing I’ve ever written. It’s pretty much just about our relationship from a mother-daughter perspective. In Spades, my prose piece, is where I get a lot more fleshed out with it. I think my brother is really the main character of that one. But it is very much about my lineage, where I come from, both genetically and physically. I’m from Central Kentucky, and it’s very much about my roots, what influenced me to be the person that makes the decisions that I do. 

Abigail Bobst

…Yeah, I think that’s a really meaningful output for writing. And I think you do have such a descriptive and fantastical writing style. I was really endeared by all of the pieces you wrote. So moving on: I think a few people had a similar output, where some of the stuff that they submitted to Botticelli was originally for class. So were the pieces that you submitted made for a class? 

Adara Dobson

In Spades was a class assignment. It was for Lesley Jenike’s creative-nonfiction class and it was the first assignment this semester. I actually had just finished it and turned it in two days before the Botticelli and the Creative Writing Awards deadline. So I was like, “it’s done, I guess”. I had never really written prose before. So this was definitely a shock to me. The assignment was to write about a self personification as an object, and I did a deck of cards. But Blue-Eyed Baby was not for a class. I just write a lot of poetry and stuff like that. And this is a little bit silly, but especially when I have a five hour drive from Kentucky to Ohio, that’s usually whenever I get line ideas. And Blue-Eyed Baby was essentially just an amalgamation of different lines that I had thought of during that one singular drive.

Abigail Bobst

…I also grew up in a family where we played poker a lot. And I was sat there with my little five-year-old self learning how to play black jack and showdown. So I related a lot to your In Spades. Specifically, I think you managed to personify it and talk about it in a way that was really engaging. I love the way that you described your little kid-self playing blackjack with your brother – just this hyper little kid. It was so good. 

Adara Dobson

Yeah, my older brother is seven years older than me, so there’s a fairly big age gap. So I’ve always had the dynamic of, ‘I want to be just like him, I want to impress him, I just want him to think that I’m cool!’ So in everything in my life, I’ve just had the outlook of, ‘but is my older brother gonna think I’m cool?’ That’s what older siblings are for. 

Abigail Bobst

That’s interesting. Also, just because I’m personally curious: How did you learn about Botticelli? Have you submitted to Botticelli before? 

Adara Dobson

I had not submitted to Botticelli before, because I honestly didn’t know that I could submit the same pieces from my creative writing award submissions to Botticelli. And then me and my friend, AJ Russo, had asked Robert, ‘Hey, can you do that?’. I never even thought to ask. And he was like, ‘please do’. And I was like, ‘my bad king’. I hadn’t even thought of that as an option. I’ve been submitting to the creative writing awards every year that I’ve been at CCAD, but I’ve never submitted to Botticelli before. So that was very cool.

Abigail Bobst

Well now you’re in it, and you get a free copy. Brag to your friends, your family, whoever. People saw your art and were like, ‘oh my god, we need to put that in a book’. Oh yeah, your other two pieces that were attached to Blue-Eyed Baby: Visceral and Yellow (For Erica). Were those class assignments, or were they your personal writings? 

Adara Dobson

Visceral was another personal writing, but Yellow was an assignment for Lesley Jenike’s poetry class. You had to write an ekphrastic poem, and Yellow is an ekphrastic poem for Edward Hopper’s Morning Sun. 

Abigail Bobst

There you go. A ringing endorsement of Lesley’s class. 

Adara Dobson

Oh my god, she’s my favorite. I love her so bad 

Abigail Bobst

She’s so fun. She’s so funny. 

Adara Dobson

That’s my mom. 

Abigail Bobst

That’s my mom. Okay, next question: So the creative process of In Spades and

Blue-Eyed Baby: What would you say your creative process is like? Do you get inspired by nature or walking around, or are you just a yapper?

Adara Dobson

A lot of it is, yeah. I have the semblance of a plan, and then I kind of just jot down words that look cool together or sound like they’d be fun. And then I just build from there. I pull mixed pieces out of a bag and throw them on a Scrabble board and see what sticks. I am very inspired, overall, by the media I consume. I’m very, very big into music. I would have gone into music production if I didn’t go to CCAD…So I think a lot of In Spades was influenced by grunge music, like Alice In Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, stuff like that. And I think a lot of the style of that piece is grungy…

Abigail Bobst

Out of curiosity: English was always my favorite subject in high school. How has your writing style matured since high school, middle school, to where you are now in college? 

Adara Dobson

I have definitely always been a writer, for sure. I have probably been writing longer than I’ve been drawing. I can remember when I started drawing seriously, but I can’t remember a time when I didn’t write seriously. ‘Matured’ is definitely a good way to put it. In middle school and high school, I did a lot of fiction – random things that didn’t really make sense or weren’t enjoyable to read or write. No one was having a good time with those. But now I do a lot more poetry, and after writing In Spades, I’ve done a lot more prose…It’s probably the most fun I’ve had writing in a really long time. Poetry is one of those things that I’ve always done. I’ve always felt the need to do it. But it is one of those things that is upsetting to do. I enjoy it, but it’s a sad thing for everyone involved in the process. But prose is a lot more liberating. I’ve always been a fan of poetry. I very much like Sylvia Plath. She is one of my all time favorites, and I know that every woman in her early 20s says that. I’ve always been really into Ernest Hemingway – the American classics. And now I feel like I can actually take part in that alley, as opposed to the alley that I’m more familiar with. 

Abigail Bobst

So you’ve been writing, as you said, since you were a kid. But how has your actual writing voice developed?. Do you think that it’s matured or become more concise? What’s your relationship with that?

Adara Dobson

I feel like it’s definitely grown with me as a person. Everything you do as a person matures with you. But overall, I feel like it’s been fairly consistent. I described it once as a therapist’s office. It’s very clinical and cold, but in a comfortable, camaraderie sort of way. I feel like when I write, it’s detached from me, but not in an uncomfortable way. And I feel like it’s always been like that. I’ve always written in a way that’s more so an extension of myself than just me. Because, as a person, I am a very loud, extroverted, crazy individual. But when I write, I definitely chill out a little bit. I’m able to detach in a way.

Abigail Bobst

That’s always so fun to me – reading people’s writing, comparing the way they present themselves as a person versus how they write. Going back to the Creative Writing Awards: Do you have any advice for anybody who’s a little bit hesitant to submit? Maybe if they’re thinking, ‘oh, I don’t know if my stuff’s good enough’

Adara Dobson

That has been my negative mantra ever since I started submitting. I was thinking, ‘well, I didn’t win last year. It’s probably not gonna get anything this year’. And then this year, I won. I know everyone says this all the time, but just keep fucking doing it. This is kind of what I touch on in In Spades. Eventually something is going to happen. Whether someone else graduates or gives up, something is going to happen if you just don’t quit. I do everything that I do out of sheer spite and determination. Sometimes, it’s just an outlast game.

Abigail Bobst

Yeah, I think a, ‘Fuck it we ball’ attitude is very healthy here

Adara Dobson

Fuck it, we ball

Abigail Bobst

With rejections, you just have to adapt. It’s like, ‘oh well! Run it again!’. 

Adara Dobson

It sucks a lot for a little bit, but then you just keep going. What are you gonna do? Stop?

Abigail Bobst

Yeah, ew.

Adara Dobson

Who would do that? Disgusting. What I recommend – because I did lose two years in a row with every piece that I submitted – is to seek out the people who would know why the piece wasn’t accepted. And hey, writing and art is objective. Everyone’s gonna have their own opinions about everything. And I think that any writing or any art that’s not AI generated is awesome.

But I emailed Lesley Jenike and I was like, ‘Hey, can you read some of my stuff and tell me where I can push a little further? Where can I build it to be better? Where can I push myself a little harder?’ I looked for people in the field that knew what they were doing and sought out a mentor. Just look for people that know what they’re doing or have a doctorate in the thing that you want to know about. And if they’re cool enough, be like, ‘Hey, can you tell me how to be cooler? Because you’re cool and I want to be cool like you are. Teach me how to be cool’ And I just kept taking writing classes, and I kept emailing writers or published people, and kept asking, ‘Hey, if you have a second, read some of this stuff, and tell me what you think’

Abigail Bobst

I think that’s really good advice. If I think about doing that, I’ll be like, ‘oh, I don’t

Know. I don’t wanna bother them’

Adara Dobson

Oh my god. I have so many deleted drafts of emails I wanted to send to professors that I just ended up deleting. My advice would be to find someone you’re comfortable with and start there, and then you can build from there and reach out to strangers. Because that is scary.

Abigail Bobst

I think having that sense of community is very valuable with writers – even if it’s not with a teacher, even if it’s just with your peers. You’ve just got to pick your community carefully. Find people who genuinely want you to grow as an artist. Going back to your specific pieces: So the four pieces that we read – In Spades, Visceral, Blue-Eyed Baby, and Yellow – they’re all very different tones. It doesn’t seem like you have much of a preference for style or genre

Adara Dobson

Again, it’s curious that you say that. I have always been told, and I’ve always thought I have very ‘samey’ pieces. I am the kid that’s writing weird, sad shit. It’s consistent. Every time, I’m gonna write a weird sad thing. And I feel like everything I write at this point in my life is the weird sad stuff about the stuff that I’ve experienced as a person. Because good golly, I have nothing, if not lived experience.

Abigail Bobst

The friend who’s always trapped in a Herculean trial

Adara Dobson

Yeah, absolutely. I am Sisyphus if Sisyphus was a 22 year-old girl. But I feel like a lot of the things that I do are very – without trying to sound like a narcissist – they’re very self-based and centered around the things that I’ve gone through or experienced. Things are a little bit embezzled for the fun of it. But I literally grew up losing poker to my entire family, and I will continue to lose poker to my entire family until the end of time. Or like in Yellow, I talk about my mom’s best friend in high school that passed away in a car crash, and that is a real thing. I have her obituary at my house right now – it’s in a photo album – because my mom still looks at her on her birthday, however many years later. All these things feel similar to me because they all did happen to me. But from an objective point of view, I guess they are very different. 

Abigail Bobst

I mean, I don’t think it’s selfish to write about your life. It’s a way to talk through your experiences. But I got the impression that your writing was so dynamic because I heard you read In Spades at Lesley’s reading. Obviously you express some emotional things with In Spades. And I was like, ‘oh, I was also sad as a very lonely child’. And there were little sprinkles of sadder moments. It was like, ‘oh, this little kid, they’re playing poker with their family, and they’re trying their best, but they’ve got the indomitable human spirit!’ And then I read Visceral, and I was like, ‘oh, I’m so sorry’

Adara Dobson

Yeah, in hindsight, In Spades is definitely a more optimistic piece. I feel like I end that one on a very high note. And I do that a lot. I try to start out real sad, but something will go okay in the end. But then sometimes I just start out so sad. And then there’s not a whole lot of room to go up from there. 

Abigail Bobst

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I think writing about those personal experiences, if you’re comfortable enough being that vulnerable, is a valuable thing. Motheramphetamines was a piece one of our classmates – Alex Skelly – submitted. And that was a gut wrenching piece about their experience being a child in a household that abuses drugs. And it got runner-up in prose. You may define it as, ‘sad girl’ or whatever, but I think there’s value in that. Everybody gets sad. And so going along with that: Was there a thought process behind what kind of stuff you submitted to the creative writing awards? Was it older stuff? Was it all new stuff? 

Adara Dobson

A little bit of both. In Spades was the most recent thing that I wrote. And Yellow was the oldest piece that I submitted. Yellow was written a year and a half ago now, and I have cleaned it up a little bit here and there. I changed some verbiage, or I changed a couple of words to end a line. But it’s stayed largely the same. Visceral I fought with for a very long time, and I’m still fighting with it. I feel like I butchered that thing to hell and back. It’s a very different piece compared to when I started. But I finally got into a place where I was like, ‘fair enough’. So I tossed that one in there. I think Visceral would have been the in-the-middle thing. I wrote that one this past summer. So it’s a little bit of everything in there. 

Abigail Bobst

Also, out of your curiosity: Which of your pieces do you personally think are the strongest? Because we talked and between both of us, Visceral was our favorite. Do you have a favorite that was the most fun to write, or that you personally think is strongest?

Adara Dobson

Well, for prose, I only wrote and submitted In Spades, and then that won. I’m not gonna lie, I did not feel very strongly about Blue-Eyed Baby at all. I liked it, and I liked it enough to include it in the submission, because you get three pieces. But honestly, Blue-Eyed Baby was kind of my throwaway. I think I feel the strongest about Yellow, but maybe that’s just because I’ve put the most work into it. I do feel fairly strongly about Visceral too. I love it, but I can tell when I read it that not everybody’s gonna get it. Blue-Eyed Baby – I like it, I really do – but I didn’t have high hopes for including it. I have always been very in-touch with what’s won in the past, and the judges never really go for a shorter piece. I was like, ‘I know that, but I’ve got a third slot’. It’s short and it’s not crazy intense. I think it’s 10 lines. And I did two really long pieces, so I might as well toss a short one on there. And then I remember at Lesley’s reading, Robert Loss was like, “…And then the runner-up in poetry is Blue-Eyed Baby”. I was shocked and stunned and surprised. First of all: crazy time to tell me that. But then he said, “Blue-Eyed Baby”. Okay, fair enough. Who am I to complain? But it was a surprise to me that Blue-Eyed Baby won. It’s not that I thought it was the weakest, but I didn’t think it had good odds. 

Abigail Bobst

That’s another interesting thing: Did you edit or write these pieces knowing you might submit them? Did that alter how you wrote them, or were they just purely for yourself?

Adara Dobson

I knew I wanted to submit Yellow, and probably Visceral. Yellow was the one that I felt most strongly about when I was writing it…When I write, I know that the awards are going on. One of these pieces are going to be what I submit. So I knew I wanted to submit Yellow. I was fairly certain about Visceral, but when I started Visceral, I became fairly convinced that I was not going to submit it. It is a very dark, very not relatable thing. But it ended up coming out in a way that I quite liked. But Blue-Eyed Baby – I wrote that straight-up for me. And I put it in my self-publishing book. But I only ended up making that my third piece because it was short. Now I’ve got In Spades and I submitted it because Lesley really liked it. She liked Yellow and Blue-Eyed Baby. And I was like, ‘Well, if the teacher with the doctorate thinks that’s the good one, I guess that’s the good one’. That was one that I didn’t write to submit, but obviously I’m glad that I did. I did write other ones to submit that I ended up not submitting. But I definitely think it influenced form above all else. I don’t think it influenced word choice or topic. But whenever I sit down to write something that I know I’m gonna submit to a contest or a publishing opportunity, I get a lot more in-my-head about the specifics of form. When I write poetry to submit, I feel like I have to do something crazy with the form or else it’s not going to be cool enough. So for Yellow, every other stanza had a really long line in the beginning, and then a really short line, so it flows like a curve. But with Blue-Eyed Baby, I was just like, ‘these are some words that kind of go together’. I hadn’t thought about it, but I think it does influence the form of my poetry, for sure.

Abigail Bobst

I mean, with Botticelli specifically, we unfortunately have to include excerpts of these really long pieces. Some people submitted like 10 page essays.

Adara Dobson

That’s why I thought I wasn’t in the running. 

Abigail Bobst

No, longer pieces just mean we have to cut it down. We feel so bad. We include an excerpt of it, and then we post the rest of the piece on Blogicelli. Honestly, I would personally recommend submitting to both the Creative Writing Awards and Botticelli. Because it’s two different judging groups. With the creative writing awards, it’s a bunch of writer judges. But with Botticelli, it’s completely student-curated. You could have something that gets rejected by the Creative Writing Awards that gets accepted in Botticelli, because it’s just different judges. So I would say submit to both

Adara Dobson

Oh my god, submit to both. I have been losing out on so many opportunities. 

Abigail Bobst

Botchelli’s very fun. You get a free book, it looks good on a resume, you get to see your stuff in a book – it’s so cool…

Adara Dobson

…It’s easier than you would think to just submit your work. It’s definitely scary, but something’s got to hit eventually…