I always wanted to be the kind of writer without those handicaps – who could write on the beach, in my office, anywhere,” she said, early in our conversation.  However, it always came back to the Virgin Islands, to inhabiting the world of her characters.  “The more I can live in the place the better – if I can listen to the music, eat the food, talk to someone on the phone who reminds me of my main character, even wear the clothes.”  This is Yanique’s authorial quirk – not the necessity for a particular pen or a certain start date, but the ability to engage completely with the environment and culture of her story.  While this was said in the context of fiction writing, that is not Yanique’s only genre; she is also a poet and a nonfiction writer.

                 “I never knew you had to make a decision – I always thought I could just be a writer.”  This, like her desire to work in any setting, is indicative of Yanique’s fluidity.  She is a writer who does not require a subcategory.  She allows different vestiges of herself to appear in different work.  “Poetry often comes out of a static image.  I think I more conscious or political as a poet.  I much more allow what Tiphanie thinks of the world to come out in poetry.  In fiction I’m much more interested in the subconscious.  I write fiction because I don’t know something.  With nonfiction memoir it’s also asking why, only with different subjects.  I’m funniest in essays.  I get to be the real quirky, funny me – I get to be the first person narrator.”  While Yanique is a jack-of-all-trades in her writing life, she is here at Drew as well.

                 Her students perhaps most often refer to Tiphanie Yanique as “the new fiction writing professor.”  While this is true, she is also a new nonfiction writing professor as well as a professor of Caribbean literature.  This relationship between the analysis and creation of literature is particularly interesting in this case because Yanique is “the teacher but also the subject.”  She is in an unusual position as a creator and teacher of Caribbean literature as she could potentially put herself on the syllabus.  Instead of doing this, however, she says: “I get to spy – it allows me to engage with people studying the dialogue I want to participate in, and I’m excited about that.”

                 At the end of our conversation I asked Professor Yanique to leave us – her students – with a final thought about writing, teaching, reading or anything.  After a moment, she said about writing, reading and her classes: “You have to love literature.  You have to be in love with books.  You have to feel that books have saved your life.  Not everyone in the class have to want to be a writer, but everyone has to read.”