3 Questions with Celia Cummiskey
Celia Cummiskey is a recent graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University’s MFA program. Her work has appeared in the Missouri Review, Post Road, CRAFT, and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles, California.
Editorial Assistant Kristen Therese Chua talks with Celia Cummiskey about their work from Issue 75, out now!!
What led you to your decision to incorporate historical elements alongside the contemporary pop culture elements in your piece?
"Hortus Conclusus" started out as a collection of different writing exercises that I was noodling with, and originally, the Anne Boleyn section was a separate essay. Eventually, I realized that they were all speaking to a similar concern, and I began to play around with combining some of the flash pieces-- cutting and moving them around. So, it was less of an active decision to include historical elements and pop culture and more that all of this information was helping me to see the heart of the essay more clearly.
What inspired you to write about the experience of girlhood and its universal ability to transcend time and history?
I wrote my undergraduate thesis on women in medieval literature, and I've always felt a kinship with some of history's more thorny and complicated women. It can be easy to see all the things that have changed, but I wanted to look at what stays the same. I think it is the same feeling as walking by a gaggle of middle school girls now and thinking wow, my god, our experiences were so different. Then you overhear a snippet of a conversation about a crush or a bad haircut, or whatever, and you're like, wait, no, in the important ways, it is exactly the same.
Is there anything you’d like to share about “Hortus Conclusus” that we don’t know?
This was the last essay I submitted for workshop during my MFA at Virginia Commonwealth University, and I owe such a debt of gratitude to the incredible Sonja Livingston for her guidance and the spectacularCNF writers in that workshop for their generous feedback. Thank you!