Featured Interview With Dion Anja
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
Hello, I use Dion as my pen name and I was raised in a small town in Turkey. Luckily, after I enrolled into university, I moved to Istanbul where I enjoyed switching continents in the blink of an eye. I am a literature major and I love reading! I generally read classics but I love discovering modern or underappreciated classic writers too. Also, I love walking in nature, writing, learning languages and new stuff, and playing with cats! I have recently adopted a kitten which I named Monsieur. Yes, I am learning French. I love how different languages open different doors inside our souls, it feels like I discover hidden parts of myself every time. About my writing, it is really a mixture of so many feelings and genres. I self-published a poetry collection this year called “My Dawn Is Only Five Hours Away” but until this book, I have never liked poetry and would never imagine I would be writing them! So I tend to harmonize with my inner flow in my words though they generally have a gloomy side.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I remember very vividly the day I fell in love with books and it coincides with me borrowing a copy of Meyer’s “Twilight” from one of my friends. Though it is looked down on today, I enjoyed it and was almost obsessed with it back then. It was an easy read and as a 13 or 14 year old, I was fascinated with how someone could create such a magical universe with their words!I My writing journey began a couple of years later. There was a Sims forum on the internet and I sort of was writing a story about my Sim characters. It took on and I finished a book on Wattpad, got an offer, declined it and then… Well, I had to deal with “writer’s block” for about 3 years. I am turning back to my roots now, thankfully. And I am full of ideas!
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
As I mentioned before, I read a lot of classics and I love reading them. My favorites are Dante’s “Inferno”, Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein, and Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray”. I like Patrick Süskind and Kazuo Ishiguro as more contemporary authors. My favorite genres include mystery, romance, and gothic. My muse generally come from my surroundings and my feelings and I find the most minute detail to be fascinating often. In terms of people, women authors really empower me when I feel down as I can identify myself with them.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
My debut book is a poetry collection called “My Dawn Is Only Five Hours Away”. I started working on it back in April or March when I was distracted during my online classes. I could never believe I would be working on poetry but as I wrote I was convinced that what I and we as humanity go through these days can only be captured in raw and intense poetry. I worked on it until the end of October, I guess, and it blossomed into something that I am proud of today. I explored themes of love, death, anger, anxiety, sadness, hope, etc. during this pandemic and I wanted to tell it from a young adult’s point of view as our so called “glorious” days fade away during these lockdowns. I also wanted to experiment with literary movements like romanticism, and genres like manifesto. Therefore, there are narrative poems about fairies, talking cats, and lakes that awaken existential crises too. I am currently working on its paperback edition and I intend to add extra poems because I loved the whole process.
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