We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Caitlin Conlon a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Caitlin, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

As long as I can remember, I’ve been a reader. Growing up with no other children in the house, being raised by my grandmother, books became my best friends and confidants. Many of my fondest childhood memories involve sitting in the yard on a blanket, reading until I was called inside for dinner.

Originally, like many kids who love stories, I thought I wanted to be a novelist. I attempted a few stories in elementary and middle school but never really found my stride. I had no original ideas, and thought perhaps I wasn’t meant to be a writer after all.

When I found poetry in high school, however, my whole worldview of what a writer could look like changed. As I began reading and listening to contemporary poetry, I saw poets in their 20s and 30s doing something incredible–writing, performing, and confirming for me that the imaginary life I’d envisioned for myself as a child could be possible. Albeit, through a different genre.

I have always wanted to live a creative life, but it wasn’t until I found poetry, and discovered other poets having success in their field, that I began to believe I could do it too. With that confirmation, I went to school for English and Creative Writing which only cemented that I was on the right path for my interests and dreams.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Hi! My name is Caitlin Conlon, and I’m a writer based out of Upstate New York. I’m a graduate of the University at Buffalo, where I received a BA in English and a Creative Writing Certificate. While there, I received the “Friends of the University Libraries Undergraduate Poetry Prize” and the “Arthur Axlerod Memorial Prize” for Poetry.

My debut poetry collection, “The Surrender Theory,” was published in 2022 with Central Avenue Publishing, and I’m currently hard at work on finishing my next book. My poetry focuses on themes of grief, love, mental health, and healing, among others. I’ve always been a highly emotional and perceptive person, and have used those traits to guide my work.

As well as being a writer, I’m a creative writing workshop facilitator! I’m the co-founder of Unearth Writing Retreats alongside ari b. cofer. We put together in-person writing retreats with the goal of fostering community, giving writers tools to write poems they love, and inspiring discussion about poetry and creative non-fiction. We’ve been doing these retreats since 2022 and plan to keep doing them for many years to come.

I’m also currently in the middle of hosting a Taylor Swift-themed writing course via Zoom. In the last few years I’ve discovered that I have a real love for teaching, and plan to keep offering fun and accessible writing courses and workshops as long as there are people who want to take them.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

My social media journey has been a complicated one, as I think it always is for creatives. The platform that I’ve seen the most personal success on in the form of followers is Instagram, though TikTok has certainly been the most instrumental in promoting and sharing my book.

When I first began sharing my work on social media, what helped the most was making genuine connections with readers and other writers. Though my goal was to reach as many people as possible, and hopefully make myself look more enticing to potential publishers, I quickly realized that prioritizing my person to person relationships vs my relationship to my audience as a whole was more meaningful. Now, many years after I first started posting on Instagram, I can recognize usernames of followers that have stuck with me since the beginning. I’ve created relationships that are not built on a transactional basis but, rather, an acknowledgment of a shared feeling or experience that has lasted across time.

In a more basic sense, I think the key to any social media platform is consistency, and the ability to switch gears when something isn’t working for you anymore. It can be easy to let social media ruin your day when you’re a creative. Since the algorithms of these websites are built on this expectation of constant content, it can make any artist feel pressured to put out work early, or to share work designed specifically to be relatable. It can also make you feel inadequate when you put a lot of work into something only for it to be seen by a handful of people.

My advice would be to listen to your body and your heart. If you don’t feel good about what you’re putting online, then that’s a sign that it’s time to pivot. Don’t be afraid to change gears and reinvent yourself. There is no one way to find success online–you just have to experiment until you figure out what works for you.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Though financial support will always be a critical part of maintaining the creative ecosystem, I think the most important thing you can do to lift artists is to show up for them. If you like somebody’s work, tell other people about it–working at a bookstore, I see firsthand the power that word-of-mouth has. Attending readings, gallery showings, and online events is another great way to show institutions and businesses and creatives themselves that art matters. Even just sharing content from creatives on social media can help increase their visibility and grow their audience.

I find that so much of being a creative revolves around convincing people that you are worth listening to. It’s much easier to do the convincing when you have an audience behind you, reinforcing and emphasizing your value.

Contact Info:

• Website: cgcpoems.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/cgcpoems
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cgcpoems
• Twitter: https://x.com/cgcpoems