Jon Pineda

North Carolina · connected South Carolina · born or raisedBorn 1971

American writer

Worked at Queens University of Charlotte
Born in Charleston source

poet

Quotations with a citation

Fiction is something that I've always wanted to write. I think that I give myself a break when I write fiction. And that's not to take anything away from people that write fiction, because I know that it's just as taxing, and there's so much involved with that. But for me, I write poems because I have to, and I write stories because I want to. When I'm writing stories, I tend to write stories when, like right now, I'm writing a lot of stories because I'm trying to get away from this collection of poems. It's just killing me. But, that's kind of what it is for me.

Once I wrote poems, I found that I was able to piece together individual moments that would, I’d hoped, sometimes compound. The line was the most important thing to me—that and the music it produced.

I think it’s relative to the story you’re writing. Some novels are filled with summary and some are filled with scenes. Others are a beautiful, confusing mix, of course. Ultimately, I wanted to write a novel that I’d want to read later.

The setting, with all of its contradictions, is crucial. The land provides a deceptive promise of freedom, yet also presents itself as a burden. I’m drawn to these contradictions. They feed the emotional intensity of the novel…