WOTM: An Interview with Evie Lee (evie1ee)

31 DECEMBER 2020

The Writer of the Month Project is a revised segment of The Plain Poets that looks into what makes a writer, be it their craft or ideas. At the end of every month, we will be conducting an interview with a selected writer, and we’ll be diving into their muses, their writing history and much more.

For our second writer for this project, we decided to meet the Louisiana-based writer behind @evie1ee on Instagram. Her account currently takes on a vibrant, psychedelia aesthetic, but I promise you, her writing is anything but an acid trip down the road. From my own perspective, I believe her work examines the facets of the human condition through Evie’s eyes. The conducted interview consisted of 6 questions, and I would like to thank the 5 writers who submitted their questions.

To start off the interview, we dived into Evie’s favourite piece of writing that she’s ever done. According to the writer, she claims that her piece, “your manic pixie dream girl”, is her absolute favourite. It’s a piece largely influenced by her love for John Green’s novels, especially their recurring trend of featuring a female side character that is only meant to drive the plot of the entire novel, let alone the male protagonist’s character development. No matter how interesting she is, the focus is only directed on the main character.

“The manic pixie dream girl poem is just talking about how that trope is problematic and a little bit misogynistic,” she says, “and it was really fun to write.”

If you’re confused, think of Margo from Paper Towns. She’s beautiful, she’s quirky, and she’s pretty chaotic. On top of that, she’s full of mystery, which is constantly gushed about throughout the whole story. The whole novel is based around her disappearance, but we don’t really examine what makes Margo an enigma. Instead, the whole story is written from the perspective for a boring, mediocre male character such as Quentin Jacobsen. Margo is your manic pixie dream girl. She comes into his life as this chaotic butterfly to teach Quentin how to live his life, but that’s just it.

(Fun fact: Evie’s favourite book from John Green is Looking for Alaska)

When asked where she gets her inspirations from, Evie cites personal experiences as her muse. Much of her narrative work is based on her observations of other people. Other than that, her dreams are her own muse. She reveals that due to the vivid (yet unusual) nature of her dreams, she can remember them very clearly - when writing, she actively features pieces of her dreams into her work. For example, her pieces “dream journal entries and other small talks with the universe” and “louisiana as an abstract concept” highlight this concept perfectly. Both of these pieces recollect what she had experienced in her dreams, and safe to say, they really are vivid. I cannot deny how her writing has made me feel, as if I had experienced her dreams myself.

On the note of writing and dreams, Evie hopes to pursue creative writing as a college major in a few years. As a high school senior, she’s currently applying to colleges in places where there’s a distinct slam poetry scene. Brave New Voices is an international slam poetry program that has caught her eye since she has competed for it before, and it has fueled her passion to do slam poetry well into her adulthood. As The Plain Poets, we wish Evie well on her slam poetry career.

As of now, Evie does not have any writing projects off Instagram, however does have an interest to be a travel vlogger someday, with various destinations in mind.

To conclude the interview session, we wanted to ask about her favourite imagery, and the writing process behind them. Though she does not have any preferences, she does admit that she goes with whatever imagery that naturally comes to mind. Much of it is inspired from her experience as a voracious reader though, and it is the books she has read that taught her how to craft imagery. As an observant writer, she’s also an observant reader - if there are phrases or words in a book that strike a match with her, she’ll definitely take note of it. She will also pay attention to how the authors craft their description, recreate it, and adapt it to her own writing style. Only then, she will expand on how she describes things, which is no wonder why her pieces are beautiful and rich today.

Here at The Plain Poets, we aim to identify these unique poets and writers and to put them on a pedestal via a platform everyone can support them. You may check out our page here.