my gypsy soul
I am earth and sky. Everything cosmic is within me.
Everything I am comes from what is and may always be. There is a force inside us all. We don’t know where it comes from. But it guides us to love someone or something. We live and create through this love. It is what we move toward.
I write my insides until they become visible to me and those who see me. Earth words are never enough. There is another language that paper cannot hold. The words here are an effort to describe the indescribable.
i am everything, i am nothing. therefore, i can be anything.
In this moment, I am writer. Tomorrow I could become the written–the dream a writer has about a life she hopes to live. In the now I write what suits me; prose, poetry, commentary, the life of earth, doesn’t matter much. Everything is a story waiting to be told, a memory waiting to be relived in some unique way. I am a memory keeper–writing in stone, in sand, on papyrus, on paper, on screen. I am memory. I am writer.
Me in the world...
zaji is a gypsy and published freelance writer and author. She earned her B.A. in English and M.S. in Journalism (magna cum laude) from Iona College. She is currently working on her M.F.A. in Creative Writing at Goddard College. She has published When We Were One, her first novel, which was reviewed and recommended by USA Today as a “must-read”; a book of poetry, Words…Loving Emotions; two short stories, The Letters, and “Lights on a Cave Wall” for the anthology Making the Hook-Up; and is working on her second novel as well as several short stories. She is also penning a memoir, In the Space of Scattered Memories, which shares random snippets of her life as a Jamaican immigrant. She moonlights as a graphic arts and web designer.
PUBLICATIONS • AWARDS
• Daughters of Tomorrow. 50in50: Letters to Our Daughters. RestorationART. Fiction. Pittershawn Palmer. March 2019. Online.
• “Racism: The Unacceptable Excuse”. Neologian: Kano: Mark II. Non-Fiction Excerpt. Pittershawn Palmer. October 2017. Print.
• “The Highway”. The Pitkin Review. Micro-Fiction. Pittershawn Palmer. Spring 2017. Print.
• “In the Land of Scattered Memories: A Memoir”. AfricanVoices.com. Non-Fiction Excerpt. Pittershawn Palmer. July 2015. Online.
• Making the Hook-Up. “Lights on a Cave Wall”. Cleis Press. Anthology. Short Fiction. zaji. 2010. Print.
• “The Letters”. African Voices. Short Fiction. Fall/Winter 2007. Print.
zaji Publishing:
• Racism: The Unacceptable Excuse. Non-Fiction. Pittershawn Palmer. 2017. Print.
• A Fine Day on Church Street. Speculative Fiction. Pseudonym, zaji. 2016. eBook.
• They Came Like Us. Science Fiction. zaji. 2015. eBook.
• When We Were One. USA Today recommended read. Science Fiction. zaji. 2009. Print.
• The Letters. Short Fiction. zaji. 2007. eBook.
Award: First Annual Peter K. Hixson Memorial Scholarship. Short Prose. Honorable Mention. 2010.