Antonia Crane, On Reading

"I’m promiscuous with books. When I pick up a book, I’m attracted to the title and compelled by the opening sentence. Within the first fifty pages, I’m after a thrill. If it doesn’t happen fast enough, I tell it to get the fuck out of my house. Then I pick up another book and dig for the juice to get me writing. I cruise for sentences that make me gasp; characters that I want to kill or kiss; endings that leave me wanting more. This goes on for weeks, until I have four or five books going at once, until one of them makes me ache, scream or laugh out loud and that’s the one I finish because I used it as a springboard to dunk me into my own work until it’s time to find another."


{Antonia Crane has an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University. Her memoir is titled Stripped: Tales of a Sexual Outlaw. Excerpts have been published in The Coachella Review and Black Clock Press. She has received scholarships from College of the Redwoods, Mills College, Antioch University and The Squaw Valley Community of Writers. She’s a sex worker and free-lance journalist who lives in Los Angeles. She's a featured columnist for The Rumpus and is an editor at The Citron Review. You can check out her blog here.}