Hello! My name is Yasmine Essence. 

      As a writer, I aim to produce thought-provoking, impactful, sensory, and sometimes dreamlike pieces in contemporary and literary flash fiction, short stories, and occasionally prose poetry. In my work, I search for and connect with core aspects of my identity, grappling for answers to the questions “Who am I? How do I fit?” while also trying to process my emotions. I aim to invoke the reader's senses as well, creating worlds my readers feel they belong to and allowing them the space to feel without judgment. My work often drifts between reality and the dream world, with the former centering on aesthetic landscapes or harsh urban environments. Inspired by authors and poets such as Sandra Cisneros, Carmen Maria Machado, and Jose Olivarez, I find that my dreams and photographing life as I live it influences my need to share my perception of the world.

     There hasn’t been a day where I haven’t felt compelled to write. I feel it the most in the dead of night, working in half-sleep states where inhibitions or anxieties are at their lowest. It opens my mind to worlds of possibilities, and I am free to write what I need to say or process what needs to be processed. I write in the comfort of my room when it is quiet and silent, and nothing but a swirl of thoughts and emotions occupy the space.

      I am working on an experimental flash fiction/poetry collection describing my experience as a first-generation Mexican-Honduran-American woman who felt alone most of her life. I am also working on a series called Staying Awake. Written from a half-sleep trance state, it teeters between dreamlike mysticism and the complex reality of emotions, initially sounding like nonsensical rambling but then morphing into epiphanic statements of my life.

       I have always felt that I needed to speak but never could find the words or the courage when I had the chance to.  When I write, I know I have all the words I need to speak images clear and true to the reader so that they may enter my worlds and take what they like. I gift them a sense of belonging to any world they choose. I hope to inspire the new generation to join a vast new cycle of writers, poets, and storytellers and share their own gifted worlds.

       When I am not writing, you can find me exploring the world with my camera or behind a screen playing video games or watching anime.