Photo by Patty Michels

February's Hot Writer: Scott Onak

My genre: Fiction
 
My literary influences: A good foundation of comic books and Ray Bradbury, and then later: Kurt Vonnegut and Virginia Woolf have been important. Magic realism, too. And the influences to come.
 
My favorite literary quote: In The Famished Road, a novel by Ben Okri, a human father asks his spirit son, who's about to leave him and join the other spirits: "Does this world not move you?"
 
My favorite book of all time: Lighthousekeeping by Jeannette Winterson, and The Great Gatsby. And see the next question, because I think I made a new friend in Dream Work.
 
I’m currently reading: I just finished Dream Work, a poetry collection by Mary Oliver, and just started The Mirage, an alternate history novel about 9/11 by Matt Ruff. And I'm still working my way through a children's book with cardboard pages and brightly-colored pictures of household objects, because I'm trying to learn French.
 
My guilty pleasure book: See the above-mentioned children's book, titled "At the Supermarket." Gripping.
 
I can’t write without: Some black tea and nowhere to be for a little while.
 
Worst line I ever wrote: Sappy bits. Lots of them. Flagrant use of the word "love." Or maybe those are the best ones?
 
Brief Bio: Scott Onak's stories can be found in Mid-American Review, Willow Springs, and Quick Fiction. He teaches, writes, and speaks very poor French in Chicago. Quelle surprise!

A writer with an MFA in Creative Writing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Sarah Terez Rosenblum freelances for sites like Pop Matters and
afterellen.com Her debut novel, “Herself When She’s Missing," was called “poetic and heartrending” by ALA Booklist. Sarah is also a figure model, Spinning instructor and teacher at Chicago’s StoryStudio. Inevitably one day she will find herself lecturing naked on a spinning bike. She's kind of looking forward to it actually.
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