Meet Cotton Xenomorph Editor Chloe N. Clark!

Today’s Featured Writefest Speaker is Chloe N. Clark, an editor with Cotton Xenomorph.
Her work appears in Apex, Booth, Glass, Little Fiction, Uncanny, and more. Her chapbook The Science of Unvanishing Objects is out from Finishing Line Press and her debut full length collection, Your Strange Fortune, will be out Summer 2019. She also teaches at Iowa State University and writes for Nerds of a Feather.

What has been the biggest challenge in your writing career so far?
The biggest challenge is just realizing that as much as I love writing and get joy from it, it is also a tremendous amount of work. That not only includes the time it tacks, but also the emotional and mental toll it can have on one. I have to be very cognizant of reminding myself that I can't write everything and often that is very hard.

​How have your literary inspirations influenced your work?
In so many ways. The books of my childhood fueled my will to write and the joy it gives me, the books I read today are the ones that keep me going--whether it's the way that Colson Whitehead fuses speculative elements into his work in a way that makes them feel more real or the way that Ada Limon crafts a poem that manages to break my heart and fix it all in one line.

What project are you working on that you are excited for people to read?
​I have two that I'm very excited about. I'm currently working on a novel about space exploration and the human cost of our desire to go beyond what we know. I am also currently sending a poetry manuscript out on submission about the way that we experience bodies--physical human bodies but also bodies of land, cultural bodies, and bodies of knowledge.

Want to hear more from Chloe N. Clark at Writefest? Her schedule will be posted on our website soon!

Be sure to secure your tickets to Writefest if you haven’t already!