Who are you? What do you do/study?
I’m Maria, 23, student of English and Biology at Uni Hamburg. I’m almost done with my M.Ed. and focus on secondary school education (high school, grammar school, you name it). However, teaching and working with English Literature really is my passion so I plan on extending my stay and hopefully will be doing my PhD here (shameless self-promotion). I’ve been working at/for *tba for almost 3 years now – writing and editing articles, organizing events – and until this semester I represented the page and chaired the editorial meetings (my scholarly duties called for me this semester, unfortunately). This will be the second time that I’m reading a piece of mine at *tbapresents and I’m super excited to be back.

What or who inspired you to write?
I started writing my own stories at a very early age. I remember making up a fictional language that somehow sounded like English to me. Gibberish with a sense to it, I guess. I always imagined stories and would write them down into several notebooks. Unfortunately, I can’t find the very old ones anymore, though I remember my first story was on Hasi the Bunny (because it wasn’t a rabbit! Did you know that “Peter the Rabbit” is turned into a bunny in the animated series? Sorry, that’s the concerned Biology teacher in me). I read a lot of Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen, Charlotte/Emily/Anne Bronte, Wilkie Collins, Zadie Smith, Elena Ferrante,…

How would you describe your style?
I don’t really limit myself topic wise. However, I love detailed descriptions – realism is my thing – which probably stems from my intensive reading of Victorian novels. I participated at NaNoWriMo 3 times so far and achieved the 50k goal every single time, however I’m not finished with the last two novels and they all still need to be edited. I’m a perfectionist and can’t just do something half-heartedly, unfortunately with my working schedule right now, I don’t spend all too much time on my novel projects.

*tba and me
*Tba and me go way back now. I met lots of cool and talented people here and made some very good friends along the way. Our creative think tank helped me channel my creativity in the past years and I’ve been continuously working on my writing style too. I cover all categories because I think it’s great to have the opportunity to share your thoughts on everything really. Some ideas I scratch (for instance, I wanted to write an article on the art of breakfasting) but most of them I turn into something. I don’t know how many articles exactly I’ve been writing for *tba but my guess is somewhere around 80. I just love how the words fill up a blank page and how much you are in charge of this process.

A random fact: I’m a coffee-addict. That’s really all you need to know about me. Call me Rory Gilmore reincarnated.