Featured Interview With Angie Elita Newell
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
My name is Angie Elita Newell and I am originally from the Northwest Territories in Canada. I am an indigenous woman, I was born in the eighties which was the end of a policy in Canada enacted by the Canadian government which became known as the sixties scoop. The sixties scoop was forced assimilation of indigenous children, we were taken from our families, our nations, and placed in urban cities in adoptive or foster homes, so myself and one of my brothers found ourselves in a suburb of Vancouver call New Westminster, the Royal City.
I recently have fallen completely and totally in love with cats, and have a semi feral Maine Coon mix, I live at the bottom of the mountains and he is often confused for a lynx.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I have been fascinated with story telling from a toddler onwards, oral story telling is huge component of our culture and my love of books come on at the age of five, out in the back lands of Shuswap Lake I was with my cousins and brothers and we discovered an abandoned farm, there was a shed next to the barn which was stacked from the floor to ceiling with news papers from the 1920’s to the mid 1960’s and I was introduced to the funny pages, comics, and spent many hours over the next three summers reading them all. At six I started writing and all through elementary school my stories which I often illustrated found their way to my school’s glass display case in the hallway.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
My favourite authors outside of William Shakespeare are mostly from the early half of the twentieth century, Wilfred Owen, T.S Elliot, Ernest Hemingway, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, F.Scott Fitzgerald and JRR Tolkien, these men have had an extraordinary impact on the way I craft my art. Literary Fiction holds a special place in my art, for me its like a warm cup of coffee in an oversized chair next to a fireplace on a stormy day, comforting, when the world descends into a chaos I’ve always found reading to be innately grounding, its a shared experience that reminds us that the human experience in a connected one, at our very core we are all one energy. This world inspires my writing, she is crazy, beautiful and awesome, we need to remember that she has given us everything and we to enjoy her splendour in her raw supernatural state, because even without a human mark, she is perfect.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
My debut novel, All I See is Violence, is a transcendental journey through the history of my ancestors, we journey backwards through the unsung female warrior Little Wolf, the war monger General George A. Custer and the spread too thin single mother Nance, their stories dance through time and space to the battle of Little Big Horn, the destruction of yet another treaty and the creation of Indian reservations. In remembering everything we’ve been through, and honoring it, we can release it and move forwards, for this world is always expanding and nothing every stays the same, so let’s move with it and create something better than what we’ve found.
Connect with the Author on their Websites and Social media profiles