We were lucky to catch up with J.B. Stone recently and have shared our conversation below.
J.B. , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.
I think since it depends on the craft to be honest, but also the same lessons in many ways intertwine. I was always an avid reader, but I feel reading is more than just me being 40 pages deep into Emily St. John Mandel’s dystopic, “Station Eleven,” or being lost inside the worlds of Colson Whitehead’s “Zone One,” or Terry Pratchett’s “Discworld” Series. A lot of it also comes from getting my brain sunk into any workshop I could find, examining the texts in a way where I can slow down a bit and allow myself to take in note after note. I think honestly though, competing in poetry slams, and participating in open mics, helps build form in ways many, mostly in the less inclusive worlds of academia might not see. One of my favorite poets, Danez Smith, posted a really great thread on twitter, about how they learned more about form and the discipline still intertwined to craft in any literary medium to their experiences competing in poetry slams across the country. I think for me having to discipline myself in a healthy way, where I am honing my craft but not letting that take the fun out of such a journey is a balancing act I am perfecting every day. As for obstacles, being Autistic certainly is one, being surrounded by a stigma that goes unseen fairly often never helps of course. I also don’t wanna put some inspiration porn attached to overcoming something, but it’s less about overcoming being an Autistic writer, performer and editor, and more about overcoming the social stigmas attached to that. I still am one of the few Autistic folks that I know of trying to hold it down in the literary arts space, but I know there are others, and I hope they are finding the footing their work deserves.
J.B. , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
So, I’ve competed, featured, and showcased in venues across the U.S. & Canada, from the Art Bar Poetry Series in Toronto, to the President of SUNY Fredonia’s Home, from Ontario, Canada all of the way down south to Knoxville, Tennessee. My reviews, poetry, fiction, audio have been in about 70 publications, including Peach Mag, The Citron Review, Atticus Review, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Frontier, Star*Line, The Buffalo News, WBFO-NPR, Micro Podcast, Flash Fiction Magazine, & so many more. I have been nominated for both the Best of the Net Anthology, & Best Small Fictions. I also am the Founding EIC & Reviews Editor at Variety Pack, and read for two other publications, Split Lip Magazine & Uncharted Magazine. These are the things I am most proud of. On top of this I have garnered experience in running workshops with a whole spectrum of students, from poetry to performance. For a few years I conducted poetry workshops with the Summer Institute for Human Rights & Genocide Studies, and right now I am running monthly workshops with Accessible Academics & the Restoration Society Inc, working with adults with disabilities not that much different from my own. This Fall I will also have the honor of becoming a part time teaching artist with the wonderful folks over at Just Buffalo Writing Center, one of the most quintessential writing & literary culture centers in all of Western NY.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice
Answering this one to weed out the cryptbros out there, but I think NFTs are dangerous, I think much like the cryptocurrency system they give this stupid illusion that it’s some revolutionary by-product that will change the ways & means of digital art forever but it really is just the by-product of a glorified, albeit more sophisticated pyramid scheme.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
There are a few I can’t just stop at one. I think when you have what poetry legend Vonetta Rhodes once called your “oh snap” moment, that beautiful epiphany that strikes when your writing anything, an essay, poem, sci-fi, play, screenplay, etc, and you say, “OH SNAP” because you’re in that zone, with a pace, and a world suddenly figured out! I think also reflecting back on how far I have actually come as both a writer and a performer, how I have been able to come this far without the best grades coming out of college, without the resources of an MFA program, without the family funds to send me to a better program. I also will say being able to now run workshops even if it’s on a monthly basis is one of the most rewarding things to see people writing poems and letting their voices be heard is always a feeling of jubilee.
Contact Info:
- Website: jaredbenjaminstone.com
- Instagram: @benjamin.jared
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jared.benjamin.79 https://www.facebook.com/jaredstonebenjamin11791
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jared-benjamin-344b269b/
- Twitter: @JB_StoneTruth
Image Credits
PC: Heather Chrosniak, Brandon Williamson, & Julez Withaz