We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Oswald Perez. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Oswald below.

Oswald, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. 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 came into writing by accident.

It was my senior year of high school, in the fall of 2002. On one particular day in English class, my teach Ms. Levy assigned us a found poetry exercise to do for homework. A found poem is a form where a series of words are given and a poem is expected to be written from them.

I didn’t think much of it, I just wanted to get the homework assignment completed. The paper comes back to me and written on the margins, “Oswald, you’re a poet!”.

I don’t have any formal training when it comes to writing. I started out writing messages for my parent’s birthday and greeting cards. I didn’t have anyone to guide me as to a path forward. But I just kept writing, whether it be for blogs, scratching out short plays disguised as paying attention during lectures or writing poems.

Knowing what I know now, I would’ve benefited from taking writing classes to learn more about the various forms of writing to be a more effective communicator. My sense of place is the skill that compensated for a lack of training. Time and money stood in the way of learning more.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I have been writing on and off since middle school. But I began to take my writing seriously in 2020, during the height of the pandemic.

After taking the author and business coach Cathy Heller’s program, “Made To Do This”, I found out in those twelve weeks that the words themselves are the art. What sets me apart, is the fact that I have such a sense of place in everything that I write. Whenever someone reads my poems or prose, it’s as if you’re living the moment with me.

I’m proud of the fact that I created a book of poems, “A Poetic Journey, Staying At Home”, in the aftermath of Made To Do This. I’m proud of the fact that I’ve kept my poetry going, posting on my Instagram feed almost daily. And I’m proud that I’ve branched out into longer forms of writing, as I wrote chapters in the best selling multi-author books, “Going Places” by Sulit Press and “Authentic” from The Key Publishing House.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I was born with Cerebral Palsy.

On top of this, I was born prematurely and not expected to survive. But I dealt with all the complications, from a pair of deformed legs, to blurred vision in one eye and difficulties in speaking and hearing.

The fact that I’m on my own two feet, when I had to go through so many surgeries, doctor’s appointments, therapies is a testament to my resilience. Despite all of it, I graduated high school, got my Bachelor’s Degree in Criminal Justice from John Jay College. I have a full time job and I travel the world, bringing the stories of my travels to life by photos and words.

And the fact that I’m a late bloomer, I’m still finding out the sense of who I am all these years later. Slowly, I’m finding out what I’m capable of.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding aspect of being a creative is getting my words out into the world.

Every time I press share on any of the social media platforms, I smile out of nowhere. As I put all of my heart and soul into every single word that I write. Sometimes, the words don’t always resonate with people. And in some cases, my words tend to catch the eyes of people. This fact is true whenever I create my spoken word versions of my poetry..

I get to tell my story, free of anyone’s opinion, criticism or judgement. After years of having the narrative defined for me based on my difficulties, and outside circumstances I’m taking my narrative back.

It brings me joy to see people like, comment and share my work with others.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.oswaldperez.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/oswaldperez85
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2220061314804175/
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/opwriter85
• Other: www.oswald.substack.com www.swell.com/opwriter www.tiktok.com/opwriter85