The Writer’s Block: A Q&A with Adriana Ramirez

Adriana Ramirez is a Mexican-Colombian nonfiction writer, storyteller, and performance poet. Her memoir, Dead Boys, was the recipient of the 2015 PEN/FUSION Emerging Writer’s Prize. In 2016, she was named a “Critic At Large” by the Los Angeles Times’ Book Section. Ramirez is the co-founder of both the Pittsburgh Poetry Collective and Aster(ix) Journal. She is also the author of two books of poetry, The Swallows and Trusting in Imaginary Spaces. Her debut full-length nonfiction book, The Violence, is forthcoming in Fall of 2017 from Scribner.

Sampsonia Way spoke with Ramirez about her inspirations and challenges in writing and her journey to realizing she was a writer. Ramirez spoke about the need for what she calls a “cosmic zoom,” and her efforts to be “global” as she writes from the United States.