Meet Tatiana Maria Corbitt

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

Tatiana Maria, thank you so much for taking the time to share your lessons learned with us and we’re sure your wisdom will help many. So, one question that comes up often and that we’re hoping you can shed some light on is keeping creativity alive over long stretches – how do you keep your creativity alive?

I keep my creativity alive by letting myself play.
I make my best art when I allow myself to let go of the idea of a perfectly finished project. Overanalyzing a piece while trying to make it is a surefire way for me to get discouraged and quit, or create something completely awful — pedantic and self-serving.

I let myself discover what the piece is as I am creating it. This requires a state of flow, and a willingness to find the piece. In a lot of ways, I have to let go of the idea of perfection. In art, it doesn’t exist.

I keep my creativity alive by finding ways to express it, without pressure, in other mediums. For example, finger-painting in the park while watching the trees and listening to the birds.
My best ideas come to me in these quiet, low-pressure moments.

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?

This year marked a big milestone for me — I finally completed my first novel.
Normally, when people ask how long I’ve been working on this novel, I say five years. However, I recently realized upon deep reflection that I started writing a version of the story back when I was a teenager. I have always been a writer and an artist. However, after graduating from high school, I went on to graduate summa cum laude with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Applied Biological Sciences from Arizona State University, where I began working as an assistant research scientist at my university studying bats and immunology in 2019.

However, as a result of developing severe narcolepsy in my college years due to a virus, I was forced to change career paths. Even though living with narcolepsy is painful and difficult in many ways, it has also allowed me to focus on creating art that I feel really means something.

I became a published author in the year 2024, twice over.
My first poetry book, entitled “Wild Brujeria”, was published in August 2024 by Curious Corvid Publishing.
I also contributed to a memoir entitled “Blood Sweat Tears”, which won the 2024 BANFF Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival award.
Both of my published works explore my relationship with nature, cultural heritage, and identity. In fact, these themes tend to be interwoven throughout my multidisciplinary art practice as a whole.

The year 2025 marks the year that I received grants from Portland’s Regional Arts and Culture Council, as well as the Milagro premiere Latinx arts and cultural center here in Portland, Oregon in order to produce, direct, and star in my very first short film. This short film is based on my novel. It has been a magical experience to watch my inner world meet the physical world.

Life is exciting. I never thought I’d get into film as an art form, or modeling, or acting. These past few years have been eye-opening and I look forward to seeing what the future holds.

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?

Most impactful in my journey was learning how to listen to my own intuition. Not the fear, not the programming we all experience in different ways, but actually tuning in with my body and soul. When I write from the soul, or create any kind of art using my internal compass, in that moment I have already won.
Second, finding community and maintaining connections with people with similar goals has been instrumental to my journey. As much as it may feel like it, man is not an island. I tend to gravitate towards people that have similarly lofty goals, because the people that I spend the most time around are the people that I end up becoming like. Because of this, I am very selective with my energy. There is so little of it to go around, anyways, as a person living with narcolepsy!
Pushing past rejection to find the lesson is one quality that I value, and am still striving towards embodying. As an artist, rejection can feel like getting the wind knocked out of you — over and over and over. Because to be an artist, it requires putting your work into the world, crossing your fingers, and hoping for the best. If I can turn rejection into a lesson, it puts more meaning on the experience and helps me become stronger for the next round.

Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?

I read “Alone in Wonderland” by Christine Reed in 2021, shortly before moving to Portland. This book, and its author, inspired me to take control of my fate and honor the desire for adventure that exists within. She says,
“The past doesn’t always know the future. When we decide it’s time to grow and change, it’s not our past that tells us how. We look ahead at who we want to be and seek out a path to get there.”
Envisioning the future I want for myself is the only way I’ve been able to sustain long-term change. It is a journey of hope, of aspiration, of dreams, themselves

Here are a few honorable mentions of books that have helped shape the person I am today:

Frida Kahlo’s Diary: An Intimate Self Portrait
Brujas: The Magic and Power of Witches of Color by Lorraine Monteagut
Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldua
Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estés
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo
Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death
How to Love by Thich Nhat Hanh
I Shall Not Be Moved by Maya Angelo
The Happiest Man on Earth by Eddie Jaku
Two Houses of Oikos: Essays From The Environmental Age by James A. Schaefer
How to See Yourself As You Really Are by Dalai Lama XIV
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
You Get So Alone At Times That it Just Makes Sense by Charles Bukowski

Contact Info:

• Website: https://salembusinessjournal.org/author/tatiana/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/authortatianamaria
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tatiana-maria-corbitt
• Other: https://narcolepsy.sleep-disorders.net/author/tatianacorbitt
  instagram.com/saltytatertats

Image Credits

Eduardo Jovanovic-Medina