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Meet Larksong Board Member, Lucy Adkins

Amanda Shu

Hello, everyone! This is Larksong’s intern, Amanda Grace Shu, with another blog post! I’m interviewing each talented member of Larksong’s board of directors. This time, I have the pleasure of introducing you to Lucy Adkins, a writer who has accomplished the hat trick of genres—poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.

Lucy had known and admired Karen Shoemaker, the founder of Larksong, for a long time before joining the board of directors. She went to a writers’ retreat run by Karen and Twyla Hansen just before the pandemic struck. This was back when the Larksong’s Kitchen Table Series, which actually took place around a kitchen table, was changed to a Zoom platform because of the pandemic. 

When asked to be on the board, she had no second thoughts.

“I knew it was something I wanted to be involved with,” she said. “What I think is really special about Larksong is that it offers more than a social connection. It allows you to spend some time focusing on improving your writing. It’s an extension of a community that already exists, but it’s also a place to learn.”

Lucy’s experience as a teacher is something she hopes to bring to Larksong, as well as a positive voice and connections to writing communities across the state and beyond. “I believe that for writers, a community is one of the most important things that you can have,” she said. Although the pandemic has impacted their ability to meet in person, Lucy’s writing groups are more important than ever in these stressful times: “It’s kind of a depression, I think. The pandemic just makes you blue. But thankfully I do have my online groups to keep me going, and I’m teaching a class at Larksong.”

I asked Lucy what advice she would give to a young poet. “Read lots and lots and lots of poetry,” she said. “As you continue to read, you will come across certain poets that you feel an affinity for. Consider those people that you admire. They are your peers. You’re working on the same thing, toward the same goal—they’re just a little further down the road.”

More great advice about all kinds of creativity can be found in her forthcoming book of essays, The Fire Inside: A Companion for the Writing Life, co-authored with Becky Breed and set to be released in June. Additionally, Lucy’s first full-length poetry collection, A Crazy Little Thing, is coming out in the fall.

As our interview was wrapping up, I asked Lucy if there was anything else she wanted to add. This is what she said:

“Sometimes you want something, and you want it so bad that it seems like you wait a long time and you don’t think it’s going to happen. Then things start coming together, like a synchronicity, and an opportunity comes up. And that is what Larksong has been to me, as a writer and as a teacher. Sometimes we’re too afraid or too tired to say yes to those opportunities, but I think it’s important to say yes to what excites you. Then your whole world opens up.”