Lisa Braxton
Lisa Braxton is an essayist, short story writer, and novelist. Her debut novel, The Talking Drum, was published in June 2020 by Inanna Publications.
She is also the former president of the Boston Chapters of the Women’s National Book Association. She is a “debutante,” one of five debut novelists chosen for the Debutante Ball, a group blog for authors making their debut in the literary world. Her stories and essays have appeared in Vermont Literary Review, Black Lives Have Always Mattered, Chicken Soup for the Soul and The Book of Hope. She received Honorable Mention in Writer’s Digest magazine’s 84th and 86th annual writing contests in the inspirational essay category.
Twitter: @LisaReidbraxton
Instagram: @lisabraxton6186
What period of history do you wish you knew more about?
I would like to know more about the mid-1850s, specifically about the period of time before the Civil War when the fugitive slave law was in effect. Freed and non-slave African Americans lived their lives in the North while slavery was still in place in the South. Some slaves escaped to the North but there were bounty hunters around trying to drag them back. The abolitionist movement was very active. That seems like an interesting time period.
Favorite non-reading activity?
My favorite non-reading activity is physical fitness. I enjoy taking long walks in the park, yoga, strength training classes, aerobic classes. Before COVID-19 happened, I was at the gym just about every day after work. Now I do my workouts at home using YouTube videos and classes streamed from my gym. My husband and I are getting a Welsh Corgi puppy pretty soon. I can’t wait to take her for walks. Hopefully she’ll be able to keep up with me. LOL.
Have you ever experienced Imposter Syndrome?
I have experienced Imposter Syndrome. When I was a daily news reporter I felt as if I was an alien in the newsroom. I worked at a major metropolitan newspaper and felt as if I was pretending to be a reporter, while the other reporters on staff were the real reporters. I felt this way years later when I was a news anchor and reporter in television. Other reporters were happy to run out the door to cover stories about fires and blizzards. I wanted to make myself real small so no one would notice me and assign me those stories. But it wasn’t all bad. I won some awards for my reporting, some of the long-form stories that I reported. I just didn’t like the daily grind of going out on breaking news and competing with co-workers and colleagues at competing stations for the big story.
Is there another profession you would like to try?
I’ve told myself many times that if I could do it all over again, I would have gone back to school directly after my bachelor’s degree and stayed in school until getting my PhD. Then I would have become an academic, teaching English or English literature or French literature. I would have traveled to Europe from time-to-time as part of my academic life and written novels along the way.
Do you speak a second language? Do you think differently in that language? Does it influence your writing?
I’m actually a language dabbler. I studied French in high school and college, was a French exchange student in high school and have traveled to France twice since then. I have also studied Spanish extensively. I watch TV shows in Spanish and had a French cable channel for a while in my quest to become multilingual, but it just hasn’t happened. I have found that while I’m studying other languages, my brain can’t handle writing creatively. So, when I got serious about finishing The Talking Drum, I had to set the language learning aside.
