Author Spotlight with Leisly Ann Roman
Leisly Ann Roman is a Dominican American poet based in New York. She has been writing since elementary school and currently writes mostly on topics such as mental health and womanhood. She loves to spend her free time with her dog and advocating for mental health and wellness. Living in Phases is her bilingual debut poetry collection that highlights the ups and the downs, the phases, we all go through in this lifetime.
Q. How long have you been writing and what inspired you to start writing?
LAR: I’ve been writing for fun since elementary school. In fifth grade, my teacher had us all do little writing assignments—short stories and poems. She submitted them to the Staten Island Advance, and mine got published! It was a little haiku or something silly, and I told my mom, “I’m a published person.” After that, English and writing became my thing. Anytime I got a surprise from my mom, it would be a book on my bed. I’ve always been drawn to it. I started writing poetry in elementary and middle school, then it stopped. I focused on academics straight through high school, college, and grad school. I didn’t do much reading or writing for fun during that time.
I started pursuing writing again more seriously around 2020, the year I graduated. I was thinking about how I could use writing for future careers. What inspired me to return to it was reading more poetry and remembering that I used to write like that. 2020 was a really hard year, and the years prior were when I started therapy and my mental health journey. My collection is about that. The pandemic gave me extra time, and I used writing to journal and get my thoughts out. That inspired me to take writing more seriously.
Q. What time of the day do you usually write and describe a typical writing day?
LAR :I do everything at night. I am such a night person. I am way more productive and inspired at night. I get very easily distracted and overstimulated during the day, but at night when I’m in my room, I put classical music on TV to fall asleep. My typical scene, which you can tell by the time I post, is me in my bed with my dog and classical music playing. That’s when I write. I can write things down at any time, but I feel most inspired at night.
Q. Tell me about your first published book? What was the journey like?
LAR: My mom has always been like, "You should write a book," like it’s the easiest thing, and I was like, "Cool, yeah." So, I’ve had that in my head since I was little. Fast forward to the pandemic when I started reading and writing more, I thought, "How can I look into this?" I saw people on IG who were already published and figured it was not totally far-fetched. In 2021, I started working on it. I didn’t have a title, but I wanted to commit to writing one poem a day for 365 days, and then I’d have my book with 365 poems ready to edit. That didn’t last too long. Then, sometime in the winter, I saw an IG live with two people, one in the Bronx and the other in CA, talking about their work with Alegria Publishing. After reaching out to one of them, they encouraged me to contact their mentor for the cohort of this program. I reached out, and she emailed me. I started in March 2022 with the goal of having my book published by March 2023.
I had never written a book, but it would be a really nice gift to myself for my birthday and a way to meet my goal of writing a book in a year. And I did. So, I wrote a book with them, we edited it, and I got feedback through classes. I heard more writing from others and received good feedback from before and after. I got my very first copy of the book the day after my birthday. My mentor paid for my book to get there on time for my birthday. I definitely didn’t plan to be in my twenties with a book. I knew I would write and publish something eventually, but I never thought it could happen that fast. I didn’t rush, and I can confidently say it took time and I had incredible help to make sure it got out. The last thing I wanted was to put something out there that I didn’t actually like. I had no expectations, but this was beyond what I expected.
Q. What, in your opinion, are the most important elements of good writing?
LAR: For writing specifically, I don’t think you’re ever the best writer you could be. There are so many chances to be inspired and learn something new. Even if you’re perfectly content right now, you could read something new and want to write an after or read a new book and want to write a haiku. You could decide you want to challenge yourself and write with rules or without them. I think it’s most important to read other people’s work. When I first started on IG, I grew up studying poetry and English the way it’s taught: if it’s not rhyming, then it’s not poetry. As I read prose, I was like, "This isn’t poetry?" It’s really good, but it’s not what I grew up learning, so it’s not what I was writing. Then I exposed myself to other writing and even more famous writers. I only knew what was taught to me and what I may have dabbled in myself. My writing has changed from 2010 to now. I don’t dislike anything from back then—I still write like that, rhyming and haikus—but it’s important to open yourself up to different styles of writing. It’s so much easier to write about something in prose or in free verse or something engaging, however you want to do it. It’s also good to read as much as you can; it’s a good way to find out what you may not like or may not want to write about. It’s also a good way to challenge yourself. Aside from imposter syndrome and that feeling of being stuck or stagnant, it’s helpful for inspiration during those times when we can sometimes get bored with our writing.
Q. How do you handle writer’s block?
LAR: Prompts! Aside from supporting other creatives, sometimes I’ll take a break. Even when I want to do something, I get nervous when I have to pull something out of myself, and it’s not genuine. So, I just put the pen down and come back to it later. Sometimes I’ll jot down words for later and revisit them. I take my writer’s block very internally, like it’s my fault, and that can affect my mood and make me not want to write. So sometimes I just stop and give it space. I’ll come back to it.
Q. Are you working on anything at the present you would like to share with your readers about?
LAR: I haven’t given it the time it needs, but yes, I am planning on trying to get back with my collective this fall and working on another poetry collection, themed and focused on mythology. I want any book I write to have meaning and genuinely feel like something I can talk about and want other people to know about. This will be about mental health and more, but I do want to bring in something new that can speak to some people if written in a certain way.
Q. What advice would you give a new writer, someone just starting out?
LAR: Give yourself some time. I feel like when I started, I don’t even remember who followed me first or who I followed,, but I know it took me a couple of months of writing and engaging. Joining engagement groups on IG is a good way to build community and keep you motivated to keep writing. If I had just kept all my writing in my journal and only shared with myself, which is what I was doing before, it might have taken longer to feel confident in my writing before I ever even considered submitting it to a journal. When I first started out, I was nervous.
I started to submit to journals, and that's a good way to network, get your writing out there, and work on it without feeling pressured to share it with a large audience or too many people. So, submit to journals; it’s helpful! Also, give yourself time to build and give the community time to invest in you too. Validation is often seen negatively, but for creatives, we want people to resonate with our work. Even if it's just for us, we want others to feel and for it to be helpful. There’s nothing wrong with wanting that feeling of validation. It’s also easy to find people to follow just for follows or get intimidated by other people's work and success, but you write like you, and your style will be someone's favorite. It's easy to feel discouraged, so to try to avoid that, make the effort to post, share, and build a community. If you’re a new writer, think about your style, be willing to change things up, and be open to networking with other writers.
