Rachelle Toarmino: Let’s Get the Girlies

In this episode we sit down with Rachelle Toarmino, founder and editor in chief at Peach Mag and author of the poetry collection That Ex, to talk about poetry, community, and academia. Currently doing an MFA at UMass Amherst, Rachelle tells us about her last three years focusing primarily on poetry, we talk about the creation of Peach Mag and why it felt necessary at the time to do something against the mainstream with an ethics of care at its forefront, and we talk about being online and whether its a necessity or not, as a writer, to engage with social media. We also touch on writing practice, coming to writing later in life, neuroticism, and the joys of beginning to write fiction.

Rachelle Toarmino is a poet from Niagara Falls, New York. She is the author of the poetry collection That Ex and the chapbooks Comeback, Feel Royal, and Personal & Generic. She is the founding editor-in-chief of Peach Mag, an independent literary publishing project with an online journal, print anthologies, live and virtual events, and an editorial apprenticeship for teens. She is also an editorial advisor to Foundlings Press. She lives between Buffalo and Western Massachusetts, where she is an MFA candidate in poetry at UMass Amherst.