Who Are You? 

My name is Kesiena Boom. I'm a writer, editor, poet and all around dyke babe. This is my website https://kesienaboom.journoportfolio.com/. It's full of ruminations on queer sex, Black feminism, sad gay poems, feminist polemics and racial justice.

Where do you currently reside?

I live in a small city in northern Europe.

How long have you been writing professionally?

My first published piece came out in 2014 when I was 20 years old. It was an essay for Autostraddle about how white women need to get their shit together when it comes to feminism. Honestly, it still slaps.

Who or what inspires you to write when inspiration is lacking?

I'm absolutely always hitting dead ends when it comes to inspiration. The only way to get my will to write flowing again is to read other people's work. Usually some kind of melancholic queer novel or slutty poetry gets me back in the zone.

When did you or will you know you’ve arrived as a writer?

Oooh shit! I don't think it's possible? I know I'm never going to win a Nobel Prize for Literature or something, so I guess that I will probably always feel that I've not 'arrived'. Perhaps if I published my own book and it got a few good reviews by outlets I respect I would feel content.

I also have a great desire to write a regular sex/dating advice column. I want to be the lesbian Dan Savage (but cuter and with better politics). If I made it as an advice columnist then I'd definitely feel good. Editors hit me up! I write my own Substack advice column called 'Been There, Shouldn't Have Done That' in which I use my 20 years of regular journal keeping to look back on my dating hits and misses and give advice to others so they can avoid making the same mistakes as me.

What piece of writing are you most proud of and why?

Honestly, even though I now cringe at certain turns of phrase because I was a 19 year old baby when I wrote it, the very first article I published (https://www.autostraddle.com/its-time-for-white-feminists-to-stop-talking-about-solidarity-and-start-acting-240166/) is the one I'm most proud of. I was absolutely inundated with positive responses from people all over the world after I published it. I wrote a bunch of the praise down in my journal so that I can go back to it periodically and remember that once upon a time I managed to write something that made other Black queer women feel seen and heard and also educated a bunch of white people and hopefully made the world a slightly better place.

Do you have any current published pieces?

My latest gig is writing sex and relationship pieces for mindbodygreen. So if articles about orgasms, polyamory and foreplay are your jam then check them out - https://www.mindbodygreen.com/wc/kesiena-boom/page/1.

What is your favorite quote from yourself and from your favorite writer?

Oh lorde!!! Quoting myself? Fuck, that feels extremely vulnerable. Ummm.

“There is no room in the language of liberal feminism and its conservatism for the blood and bile that is spilt from those of us who stray from the normative. In fact we, as brown women, as angry women, as women loving women are admonished by our smoother, safer, softer sisters for holding the fight back with the suffocating scent of our lavender menace and the stings of our fists." 

I’ve actually never considered the idea of having a favourite quote by an author I admire. Since I usually like to think of their work as a whole organism that you can’t just cut a little bit out of. But I do really like these lines from the novel Black Wave by Michelle Tea because I snorted with recognition the first time I read them. “It is so hard for a queer person to become an adult. Deprived of the markers of life’s passage, they lolled about in a neverland dreamworld. They didn’t get married. They didn’t have children. They didn’t buy homes or have job-jobs. The best that could be aimed for was an academic placement and a lover who eventually tired of pansexual sport-fucking and settled down with you to raise a rescue animal in a rent-controlled apartment.”

What does being a Black woman identifying writer mean to you?

I don't know what it means for my writing, but I do know that it means that I'm automatically cute and smart, and that's that on that. Hm, no but seriously, I think for me it means that I have to believe in my right to write and publish and have opinions, because I will not automatically get that affirmation from the wider publishing world. I also think that being a writer feels like an essential part of me, just like my Blackness. I can't conceive of myself without either part.

What do you wish you knew before embarking on this journey?

I wish I had known that most of being a writer is thinking 'damn, did they pay my invoice yet?'.

Any last words?

I love language, and I'm so happy that I was born with an ability to use it in ways that give me (and sometimes others) pleasure and satisfaction.