Meet Angélique Jamail

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Angélique Jamail. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Angélique, so great to have you on the platform and excited to have you share your wisdom with our community today. Communication skills often play a powerful role in our ability to be effective and so we’d love to hear about how you developed your communication skills.

I have long been an observer of my environment. Both of my parents are intelligent, gracious people whose interactions with the world I was able to witness from an early age. My father is classically extroverted as well, making him often comfortable in large groups; this is lucky, considering he had a very public-facing career. I inherited my father’s extroversion and learned during my upbringing how to manage conflict, how to think quickly on my feet, and how to be attuned to the needs of others. Add to this my training as a writer to be a careful observer of the world around me, and it wasn’t a stretch to recognize how to communicate effectively.

But I don’t want to give the impression that it has always come easily. Effective communication takes maturity and, sometimes, emotional fortitude. These are skills that require practice. Regularly being in front of other people — for example, as a teacher in a classroom — will encourage you to cultivate those skills quickly if you want to succeed.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I’m an author, artist, and teacher who has spent most of my life in my imagination, creating narratives. I take some inspiration from the Arab fairy tale character Scheherazade, whose own narrative teaches us that stories will save our lives. Much of my formal training has been in poetry, and so I am a poet as well as a fiction writer. And because I tend to understand the world by trying to decode the stories around us, I also write creative non-fiction as one way of engaging with it.

As an artist, I incorporate writing into my work by combining my poetry with 3D paper collage. I’m always looking for new ways to make this practice accessible and functional, and this has culminated in a line of stationery and journals that feature my art.

As an educator and mentor, I have taught Creative Writing for 30 years and taught English literature and writing in addition to that for 25 of them. I now direct the Creative Writing Program at The Kinkaid School in Houston and also teach Creative Writing for various organizations including Writespace, Inprint, and Grackle and Grackle.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

From a young age, I’ve been an avid reader. Reading fiction in particular has had a profound impact on my life. Studies have shown that reading fiction, starting in childhood, is one of the best ways to cultivate empathy, as it trains us early on to care about other people (for example, characters in stories) who aren’t ourselves. But that isn’t the only benefit I’ve enjoyed by a lifetime of reading. It helped me to learn about the world: the way it is and the possibilities for what it could be; new pathways toward solving problems; vast worlds that I could inhabit whenever I wanted to pretend — in my imagination — to be someone else for a while.

I had a favorite bookmark when I was in elementary school that depicted a beautiful silver unicorn on a royal blue background, and which contained a quote from Albert Einstein that said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Regularly indulging my imagination led me to be able to solve problems creatively in real life. It allowed me to believe in possibilities that others might not come up with. Being able to envision the world in different ways not only allowed me to become a more imaginative writer; it also provided me great comfort during times of stress.

Finally, I inherited a strong work ethic from my parents, whose own hard work and imagination led them to success throughout their lives. Although their professional paths were radically different from mine, they provided a powerful model for me to understand how to approach problems, how to tackle and work through them with the promise of satisfaction at the end of my perseverance. Success has almost never come easy, but it has been more meaningful as a result.

Before we go, any advice you can share with people who are feeling overwhelmed?

I’m not sure how anyone living in this world can avoid feeling overwhelmed sometimes. This is a particular challenge for me when I have to take on many projects at the same time. While I am usually capable of handling them, I sometimes find that overwhelm prevents me from enjoying them as much as I want to, or even enjoying the non-work parts of my life. For example, October and November are an exceptionally busy time for me at the school where I teach, and if I let it, the overwhelm and chaos of my schedule and workload can prevent me from enjoying the autumn season — normally my favorite time of year.

In order to overcome this stress, I have to put firm boundaries and guardrails in place. This includes reducing the amount of additional classes I teach (at organizations outside of my school) and intentionally adding fun obligations to my calendar, like going out with friends or celebrating the holidays with my loved ones. I have to redouble my efforts at creating a separation between my work life and my home life so that I can be present and focused for both, in their appropriate times. This means sometimes working through lunch at school so that I can avoid spending my whole weekend grading papers.

I also place a lot of value in my important relationships. My family, my friends, my close colleagues deserve my attention, and I do my best to ensure that they have it. I intentionally reach out and cultivate those connections, remembering that people are more important than projects. Even a ten-minute conversation with a colleague over breakfast at the start of my school day can frame my morning in a positive light. Even an hour spent watching a fun TV show with my family can bring an otherwise challenging day to a relaxing close.

And finally, I’ve noticed my sleep and mental health are vastly improved when I make time to read something just for fun before I go to sleep at night.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.AngeliqueJamail.com
• Instagram: @angeliquejamail
• Linkedin: Angélique Jamail
• Other: blog: www.SapphosTorque.com
  BlueSky: @angeliquejamail.bsky.social

Image Credits

author photo: Lauren Volness
FINIS. cover art: Lauren Volness
HOMECOMING cover art: Lauren Volness
THE SHARP EDGES OF WATER cover art: Lucianna Chixaro Ramos