Khadijah Queen Interviewed at PEN America

Kyla Marshell interviews Khadijah Queen for the weekly interview series at PEN America, "The Pen Ten." "Is there such a thing as 'the writer’s identity?'" asks Marshell to start. Queen responds:

I wanted to say, at first, that my identity as a single mother, a Black woman, a disabled veteran, a teacher, and an artist shape my life, my outlook, and thus, by extension, my writing. I wanted to say that my identity determines my opportunities to make a living, to a great extent; how much or little time I get to spend writing; and what I write about. But, I also want to say that’s all rubbish. I want to say that my writing determines my identity as a writer. This question feels super convoluted, so I don’t have a real answer. I want to say that I think writers would do better focusing on doing the work rather than worrying about what “the writer’s identity” is. That feels like a privilege, and one I’m not always able to access myself in practice, since I exist in a body that is constantly identified and misidentified and imposed upon by outside assumptions. Perhaps “the writer’s identity” only exists in theory, and I am a bigger fan of practice. I would love to say that having an identity as a writer means doing the work of writing, versus talking about it.

Read on at PEN.