I don’t know if the gut-wrenching final scene in which its read helped cement it my mind, but I did know these were some of the simplest, yet most wonderful lines I’d come across yet in my young life. My spine still tingles with pleasure, reading over those lines. I won’t spoil the movie if you haven’t seen it (because you should-though also read the book, because it’s even better), but here it is: It happened while I was watching “Sophie’s Choice” with my mom, which one of Emily’s poems plays an important role. Because when I first heard Emily Dickinson read out loud, it was the deepest, truest kind of love at first sight. These personal things I learned only after my obsession had already begun, however. That she possibly had some kind of strange unrequited love (at least according to what I was reading about her then), and was often perceived as too intense made us, in my mind, even closer kin. Emily, after all, embodied exactly the kind of writer I so badly wanted to be: groundbreakingly serious, intimidatingly smart, overwhelmingly prolific, famously odd, and keenly able to see the glorious in the common. I didn’t really think she would answer these prayers, but I said them to her because there was comfort in offering my hopes, fears, and wishes to someone I revered so much. When I was in high school and college, I prayed to Emily Dickinson. Today, Terra is here to talk about her deep and abiding admiration of Emily Dickinson’s work. I’m not exaggerating when I say that my blog wouldn’t be what it is today if I hadn’t met Terra at a signing in 2011.) (Terra is also the first author I ever interviewed on this blog and a long-time supporter of my efforts to dedicate Aprils here at Miss Print to talking about poetry.

Terra also works as a bookseller at Little Shop of Stories in Decatur, GA.

Terra’s middle grade debut, Drive Me Crazy, will publish later this month on April 28, 2015. In Deep, her most recent YA novel, was published in 2014. Terra Elan McVoy is the author of numerous books including her Edgar Award Finalist Criminal and After the Kiss–a verse novel.

Drive me crazy terra elan mcvoy