Linette Lao

Linette Lao is a graphic designer and lecturer in creative writing at EMU. She co-created a zine called “Crimewave,” and made the zines “Slippery Shanty,” and “Bag of Walleye.” View Linette's feature poster [PDF].

What do you write?

“I write poems and I create zines. And sometimes I do a little bit of writing for work. I am a graphic designer, and I think a lot about visual and written language and the space in between. I really love that I write in a bunch of different directions.”

Why do you write?

“I write because I love the idea of language as an invention. It’s such an amazing pleasure spending time with language and talking about ideas. Language isn’t contained to a page; it’s a really tactile and visceral thing. When I think about writing, I don’t think only about words. I think about images, sounds, absences–all of that is how we read through our bodies.”

What is the most memorable thing you have written?

“One thing that was so satisfying to me was a little comic I made. I did one after my first baby, and then I did one after my second child was born. [Having a baby] was an experience that words fell short of. I was creating impressionistic images, not just pictures of things, and I was able to communicate something that was complicated and bodily and really important. I loved making that comic because it engaged everything that I love about considering language and images.”