Daniel DiStasio

ORP: What inspired you to begin writing or creating? Has that source of inspiration changed throughout your life?

Daniel DiStasio: No one saw the world I did. I wanted to make sure it existed, so I put it down in words.

ORP: What does success as a writer or artist mean to you?

DD: Success means to keep writing as long as it is meaningful.

ORP: Who do you consider to be your creative ancestors and contemporaries for your art and/or writing? How does your creative work converse with theirs?

DD: Lou Reed, John Steinbeck, Jack London, William Wordsworth, Delmore Schwartz, David Bowie and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. We see the world differently. But how? We keep coming back to that. The vision changes but the search for what it all means-- or does it mean anything resonates.

ORP: What books have you read many times?

DD: Anna Karenina- 15 times. I keep hoping she'll live.

Daniel DiStasio is obsessed with bears travelling around the world to Romania, India, Peru, Macedonia and Alaska to see bears in the wild. He earned his MFA at Spalding University. When not working or writing, he lives for his Shetland Sheepdogs: Nikolai Gogol and James Joyce.

Read Daniel’s story “Spectacled bear” in ISSUE 9.1.