Meet Our New Intern: Kayla Howell

I’ve been creating for as long as I can remember. In elementary school, I wrote a skit about a ballet class solving a mystery, and I got together with several of my classmates and we were able to preform it for the school. It wasn’t very complex, as I was like seven when I wrote it. The biggest thing I remember about it was how much fun it was to write it and how happy I was that other people liked it, too. Thus, my love of writing began.

I’ve been told I have a pretty big imagination for almost my whole life. One of my most favorite things to do is to create new worlds and see what adventures can happen outside of my own reality. Playing games like Dungeons and Dragons really puts my brain to work, as I have to come up with examples of new worlds in real time. Imagination is also useful in my prose and poetry, as I very often write about things as I imagine they would happen. For example, I love writing from the perspective of people in careers I have never imagined having (such as a neurosurgeon or as an accountant).

I’ve had some really valuable mentors during my writing career. I was introduced to things like National Novel Writing Month and National Poetry Month, which offered challenges to help me to grow my portfolio. Being able to write alongside people who had been doing so for a while was a truly valuable experience and one I will treasure for the rest of my life.

Being an intern for the Sundress Academy for the Arts will be my first real world experience doing what I love. I am so excited for this opportunity, and I look forward to all of the things I will learn from the people involved. I am so thankful everyday that I have come this far, and I can’t wait to see where I can go.

Kayla Howell (she/ they) is an undergraduate student at the University of Tennessee- Knoxville studying Creative Writing with a concentration in poetry. She is a regular at the community’s open mics and loves collaborating with other writers. She enjoys hanging out with her two dogs–Lionel and Lucille–listening to podcasts while she bakes, and playing Dungeons & Dragons.