Today, we are thrilled to share our latest author interview! In this episode, Fable and the Verbivore have the great pleasure of speaking with poet, author, and mental health counselor Marlene Devose.

Marlene independently published her first work of fiction, Poinsettia, on May 1st of this year. This book follows the journey of the character Leemi from adolescence to young adulthood as she struggles with her identity, place in the world, and tries to understand and manage mental illness on her own. It’s an honest and unflinching story about the often messy and winding road to accepting and loving who we are, finding glimpses of hope in life’s struggles, and learning about and working to actively support, and daily manage, mental health.

While reading Poinsettia, Laura (the Verbivore) and Bethany (Fable) were struck by Marlene’s poignant and truthful representation of Leemi’s daily experiences living with depression and OCD as well as the well rounded portrayal of Leemi as a person with many facets outside of her experience with mental illness. This story is a great example of telling an authentic and empathetic tale, while not shying away from some of the more painful and candid aspects of the human condition, but also finding a holistic view of a person and not defining them by their experience.

In this conversation, Marlene shares the story of how she came to write Poinsettia, which originally started as a journal to document the fictional character Leemi’s struggles with mental illness. This allowed Marlene as the writer to grapple with and start doing some self work in her own life by gaining distance and perspective on some of her own experiences. She discusses using the language of nature to help describe experiences that are difficult to pin down. She also gives some great advice about cultivating patience in the writing process and taking the time and care to make sure a story is meaningful, before releasing it out into the world. From a mental health perspective, she discusses the importance of finding beauty in the moment and focusing on it, clinging to those points of joy and having gratitude for them to help cope with the dark days.

Marlene explores more on the themes of mental health, grappling with spiritual uncertainty and identity in her writing on both her website https://marlenedevose.com/ and through her IGTV videos and story highlights found on her instagram channel @marlenedevose.

We hope you enjoy this episode, we greatly enjoyed speaking with Marlene and left this conversation having a lot to think about regarding writing truthful and heartfelt stories! Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore