LITERATURE SPOTLIGHT
IVY LEAVES JOURNAL OF LITERATURE AND ART
EDITION 101
BY EMMA STILL
NATURE, NOSTALGIA, AND NONFICTION
AN INTERVIEW WITH KAYLIE SHERRIF
When writing, Kaylie primarily pursues nonfiction as her genre of choice. She draws inspiration from many things, but nature, feelings, and memories influence her the most. “It typically always starts with something I see or something I overhear someone say.” Her observations contribute to what she decides to write about. Regarding her more subjective pieces, “nostalgia” is the word that Kaylie would use to describe them. “Flightless Bird” takes us through a story from when she was a kid. It covers the event of one of her cats bringing a live baby bunny back to her family. She also uses her personal nostalgic experiences to write more abstract pieces. She talks about having left childhood but wanting to go back in “Elegy for Adolescence.” During her creative process, listening to music directly inspires her writing. “It’s the same song on repeat. I’ll just listen to it over and over again until it becomes like white noise if it’s a song that I feel like goes with what I’m writing.”
Kaylie knows that finding the time to write consistently is quite an uphill battle. She spoke about some advice one of her professors, Dr. Updegraff, gave her regarding writing as a habit or a practice. “It’s about discipline—finding the time and sticking with it.” Committing to this daunting element of writing is important for growing one’s craft. Along these lines, Kaylie spoke about just writing, no matter how bad a person may believe their writing is. Creating a rough draft is necessary to improve one’s skills. “Know that if it’s on the page, it can get better. But it can’t get better if there’s nothing there.”
Writing has the ability to allow one to reflect on past experiences and explore recent adventures. Nonfiction gives writers the opportunity to dive deeply into these topics with a degree of creativity they may not have been able to summon upon previous reflection. This diverse genre also creates a path to ponder the mundane as well as the nature and observations that surround us.
Kaylie Sheriff has been writing about her own life experiences and observations since she was in elementary school. She could remember her dreams in great detail, so she decided to write little stories about them. “I would write out what happened, and then me and my sisters would cast ourselves as the characters.” Growing up, Kaylie didn’t dream of pursuing writing in the future. Although she enjoyed putting these dreams into words, she didn’t think about committing her life to creative writing until she reached high school.
She knew that she enjoyed writing, but she didn’t believe she had the ability to gauge for herself whether or not her writing was truly good. This is where her high school English teachers stepped in. “Those teachers were so encouraging, and they’re the reason that I am majoring in English now.” She thought her writing was good, but she had not been truly confident in her craft before then. “I had to hear someone else tell me that,” she said.
Nature provides a plethora of ideas for Kaylie to work with as well. “If I see an image like a sunset, I’ll write about it in my head.” She uses her notes app on her phone to keep “little snippets of things that could be a good idea for a story or an ending sentence for a story later.” Her piece, “A Red Eyed Song,” discusses information about cicadas as she relates them to humanity. This is one of Kaylie’s favorite pieces she has ever written.
Religious themes are also explored in some of her work. She investigates the idea of a pomegranate being the fruit that Adam and Eve ate in the garden in “Punica Granatum,” which is the scientific name for pomegranate. She says that poetry comes harder to her and “in a lot of ways, is more vulnerable.” “Return to Sender” is abstract and experimental, but it talks about the heaviness that can come with being a Christian, which is something she does not think is talked about enough.
Kaylie will be graduating with her Bachelor of Arts in English Literature this spring, and plans to study abroad in Scotland at either St. Andrews or the University of Edinburgh after taking a gap year. She also has a dream goal for her writing: “I really want to publish a book that is a creative nonfiction collection.” Regarding her future career, she said, “There’s the fantasy of being a full-time writer.”
