Meet Jessica L. Folk

We were lucky to catch up with Jessica L. Folk recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jessica L., so excited to have you with us today. So much we can chat about, but one of the questions we are most interested in is how you have managed to keep your creativity alive.

I’ve always been someone who interacts with creative endeavors, whether that was through creative writing, crafting, theatrical performance, or other methods. It feeds my soul to take in the art and entertainment others have created and appreciate that work, as well as the invisible labor behind its creation.

I love live music and theater productions. I always tear up at some point during the performance when the work is really stellar. I used to think it was because I was proud to watch my friends perform (during high school and such), but it turns out that music/performance simply bring strong emotion out of me. I also feel something similar when I watch a film or show or read a book that hits me right where it hurts – making me feel all the feelings. Engaging with things like this – creative work that makes me feel something – encourages me to create more of my own stories, in hopes that others might feel what I felt when I wrote it, when they read the story or view it on a screen.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I’ve been a reader for as long as I can remember and have been writing creatively for most of my life. I consumed stories like they were the oxygen I needed to survive.

I would read late into the night, often staying up far past my bedtime, only to be told to turn the light off and go to sleep by my concerned mother. I have joked that my need for glasses largely comes from all that time spent reading in dim light, under the covers, waiting for that moment when I would get caught.

I distinctly remember spending time in elementary school, during recess, writing in a notebook or on a computer in the classroom (if I could convince a teacher to let me) instead of playing on the swings or monkey bars. Physical activities were never really my thing – storytelling was where I thrived. Sometimes I would write with a few friends, crafting stories about young women in intense, melodramatic scenarios. Other times, I would write on my own, writing similar types of stories, but also enjoying the solitude of the writing process. Over the years, I have also found a love for research and writing. I greatly enjoy learning more about untold stories from history, especially those from marginalized voices, such as the LGBTQ+ community and then working on portraying those stories in various ways in film and TV scripts.

Since I began writing, I have played around with fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, screenwriting, and playwriting. I was hooked on writing creatively, in its many forms, right from the start. I found a special place in my heart for screenwriting during college and decided to pursue a career as a screenwriter. I got my BA in Cinema & Screen Studies and Creative Writing at SUNY Oswego in Oswego, New York. Then I went on to earn my MFA in Screenwriting from Chapman University in Orange, CA. While I was in school I had a series of mentors and class/cohort-mates who were invaluable to my growth as a writer. I can’t thank them enough.

As much as I enjoyed my time in Southern California, I knew it was time to head back to the east coast after I finished graduate school. I put myself and my nearly 20-pound cat into my Jeep, along with my friend and my sister who had flown out to drive cross-country with me. We drove for miles and miles, seeing the wide range of landscapes this country has to offer. I truly recommend driving cross-country at least once in your life. I’d love to do it again sometime.

Then a new chapter of my life began: teaching. I knew I wanted to teach in higher education, so before I had even graduated from Chapman, I had secured an adjunct opportunity at SUNY Oswego for the upcoming fall semester. Once I was home in New York, I also found myself employed at a local community college and the local public library. I had once again found ways to surround myself with stories and now I had a new way to share them with others. I knew teaching would require me to continue to create my own work, if I intended to apply for a tenure-track position one day, so I continued to write. I focus primarily on screenplays in my writing, but I have also published multiple short creative nonfiction pieces and a couple of poems over the years. I also hope to publish some fiction one day. I entered my screenplays into competitions and festivals and they began doing well – placing as quarterfinalist or higher in multiple competitions with some even reaching the finalist stage. I was onto something here…

After a few years teaching part-time, I interviewed at Western Kentucky University for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position. When I arrived here in Kentucky, I was skeptical of what KY might be like, having only briefly visited once in a different area of the state, but I loved KY’s beautiful landscapes, WKU’s classic campus aesthetic, and most of all, I loved that I would finally have the opportunity to balance teaching and writing in new ways. Apparently, it was time I learned to like bourbon!

I’ve been here in KY since 2017 and have earned tenure and a promotion to Associate Professor in that time. I’ve written multiple works over those years and seen many of those screenplays do well in competitions and festivals. My current work-in-progress is a feature film screenplay which I am co-writing with Paula A. Cajiao, called LET THERE BE LIGHT (LTBL). We are also working on a short proof-of-concept version of the script, which we hope to film later this year. We are actively rewriting the feature screenplay version right now, hoping to submit the script to more competitions and polish it for production in the future. We’ve already placed in four competitions with a previous draft of the screenplay, and we hope to see more successes to come. I mentioned that my work tends to center around LGBTQ+ characters dealing with loss or other kinds of trauma. LTBL is no exception. Our protagonist, Alex Álvarez, is a veteran dealing with PTSD. She is arrested after a violent altercation early in the film and is sent to court-mandated therapy. Through a series of events and trials, we learn that she is not suited to typical talk therapy and the meds that have numbed her all these years. She needs something more. That’s when her therapist, Elena, offers her the opportunity to try psychedelic therapy. Will Alex pursue this treatment? What happens when the only thing that may be able to help you isn’t FDA-approved and could land your therapist in jail for treating you? You’ll have to wait to see the film to find out!

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

1) Being a reader has gotten me pretty far in life. Read everything you can get your hands on. Read what interests you, what entertains you, read about things and people you don’t know anything about. There is a whole world of knowledge and imagined worlds out there – go seek them. Being a reader makes you a stronger writer. It’s not the only piece of the puzzle, but it is key.

2) Engage with creative work in other ways. I mentioned that I enjoyed theatrical performances, music, and more. I try to attend these types of events whenever I can. Even watching these types of things at home can have value – access them how you can. If you’re engaging with storytelling in its many forms, then you are growing as a creative. I remember being a part of the Storytelling Club at my elementary school and truly enjoying all the stories we memorized and performed over those few years. It was a great creative outlet for me and showed me that storytelling doesn’t have to just live within me – I can externalize it too.

3) Write what moves you. If you don’t care about the story, then the audience/the reader will be able to tell. It will be evident that you aren’t fully engaged with the character and their development, the story world, or the problems that hinder the protagonist’s growth/change. It isn’t as simple as “write what you know”, although that is a good place to begin, it’s about writing about things that matter to you. Write about what and who you’ve seen, felt, experienced, been passionate about, been angry about, screamed about, loved, lost. I care about LET THERE BE LIGHT because it is a story of a queer woman up against a system that isn’t working for her – that doesn’t truly see her or others like her. It’s about a person with complex family dynamics. It’s about a person in pain who, deep down, desperately wants to heal that pain, but isn’t sure how. That matters to me. My co-writer, Paula A. Cajiao, brings the personal elements of her military experience and aligning with the protagonist’s identity in other ways, but the core human elements, the story we are trying to tell this queer woman dealing with hard things – that is real for both of us. That’s what I want to write about.

What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?

This isn’t necessarily something I’m great at managing for myself individually, which is why I want to speak about this topic. Overwhelm is happening more and more for folks in the professional world – or really, for humanity as a whole. It’s this seemingly insurmountable feeling that we must tackle or else be crushed under it with no way out in sight.

I frequently feel overwhelmed. As a person with ADHD and being in a job that serves others (in some ways), I can easily spread myself too thin, overextending my capacity with obligations, chasing new ideas, scheduling social activities, and reaching for what I think I need to be doing, whether that’s true or not. I tend to forget to pause and remember to ground myself in what really matters. As I sit here, I have a to do list a mile long and it’s difficult not to think about the things on that list – the homework my students are waiting for me to grade, the unanswered emails, the upcoming project deadlines. It’s all a lot, right?

For me, it helps to write it down and make it “the paper’s problem” for at least a moment. Writing things down gets them, at least temporarily, out of my often overwhelmed brain. I use the Todoist app to get my life organized, which I would recommend to anyone needing a digital tool to help them with these sorts of tasks. I appreciate it mostly because I can look at the “Today” view and ignore, at least for the moment, the long list of other tasks lurking in the shadows. I also enjoy listening to focus-themed music while I work to help calm my brain or putting on “work with me” videos to co-work/body double with creators on YouTube.

Reality TV is a great way for me to turn my brain “off” and disengage for a bit, when I need to rest, but sometimes the overwhelm wins, if I’m honest. I don’t want to have the overwhelm win every day or most days, but sometimes it does overtake me. On those days, I try to take things one item at a time, one word at a time, one breath at a time, if needed. I know I’ll get through it because I have before. I have a 100% success rate for surviving the workload of life – even when I was late or didn’t do something as well as I would have hoped, I made it through.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jessicafolkwrites.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jeleigh16/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-folk-writes

Image Credits

Black and white photos: Sam Mallon
Wedding photo with Pride flag: Sur La Lune Photography