Heather Quinn

I am a nonfiction writer and photographer from San Diego, where I live with my husband and two daughters. I write personal and lyric essays primarily, but I come at nonfiction from a journalistic background, which taught me that truthtelling is a deeply creative act in and of itself.

Writing and photography have always been linked practices for me, the aim of both, as Joan Didion described writing, being to "make somebody see something the way you see it, trying to impose your idea, your picture." I spend much of my free time photographing the surrounding desert regions east of San Diego, and I try to take some kind of camera with me when I walk around the city pushing my daughters in their stroller. I earned my MFA from Portland State University. I participated in my graduation reading five days after giving birth to my first daughter by c-section, an experience that reminded me of the vulnerability, trauma, and beauty of all births, whether literal or creative in nature.