Hello! My name is Izabell Mendez. I’m from New York City and currently attending a CUNY college. I’m slowly making my way through Maurice by E.M. Forster, but my favorite book is The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern. I haven’t read many nonfiction works, but my favorite is Also a Poet by Ada Calhoun. Calhoun’s father had interviewed artists and close friends of Frank O’Hara (my favorite poet!) in hopes of writing a biography of his idol, but the project fell through. When she discovers these recordings as an adult, she sets out to do what her father could not. The memoir weaves in transcriptions of the interviews with the author’s experience trying to prove herself as the one capable to finally finish this decades-long project. As she digs through the past and analyzes her father as a young man in the recordings, she is also struggling to mend her relationship with the aging father she knows and has struggled to connect with her whole life. I was initially drawn to the book’s focus on O’Hara, but the thematic content as well as the organization overall really spoke to me. As for writing nonfiction, my piece for last year’s GWN anthology was a personal nonfiction story. However, I would be interested in exploring nonfiction writing beyond pieces those that draw on personal experience. I’m looking forward to exploring the world of nonfiction!