Aerie InternationaL - Missoula County Public Schools
Aerie InternationaL - Missoula County Public Schools
Aerie InternationaL - Missoula County Public Schools
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IntervIeW mAy 2009<br />
emma lucy bay pimentel<br />
jacksonville, florida, usa<br />
We received Emma’s first submission early in February of this year.<br />
Like all of our submissions, her work sat in our filing cabinet while<br />
we prepared for our annual fund raiser. We finally started reading<br />
submissions on a quiet Sunday morning, each of us at a table with a<br />
stack of poems, fiction and nonfiction. I happened upon her poem which<br />
immediately set off my good-poem-sensor. After reading it, I flipped<br />
to her bio. All I could utter was an astonished “Woah...” I immediately<br />
wanted to know more about Emma’s childhood and about her travels. I<br />
hopped onto our email and fired off a few questions. A week later, the<br />
answers to my questions were waiting for me as well as the essay, “Navy<br />
Blue.” She described living in Bosnia and walking across a minefield.<br />
She talked about living in Cairo and about her favorite food, “Koshari.”<br />
She discussed being proud of her younger sister’s attempts to prevent<br />
malaria. Needless to say, her writing charmed us and her life beguiled<br />
us. We thought her story was important to include in the pages of our<br />
magazine. A few emails and a couple weeks later, this interview was<br />
aching to be read.<br />
-Katie DeGrandpre<br />
Editor of <strong>Aerie</strong> International<br />
AI: Why did your parents decide to move to Bosnia when you were little? Do you<br />
remember feeling any specific way about the move? Once you were there, why did your<br />
family decide to move again to Romania and the Netherlands?<br />
ELP: At the age of seven I already considered myself a seasoned traveler:<br />
I had lived in three different states and visited relatives in a few others.<br />
Moving to Bosnia wasn’t a step I was quite prepared for, especially on such<br />
short notice, but, as a second grader and the fourth child, I didn’t have<br />
much say in it. My father was offered a short-term job he hadn’t applied for,<br />
assessing the needs of post-Communist courts in Bosnia, and our family<br />
packed up and moved out, leaving all of our furniture as well as our dog<br />
behind, the former in the care of a storage unit, the latter with relatives. At<br />
the time, we thought it was for just three months. It was a chaotic time for<br />
me – while excited to ride in an airplane and live overseas, I hated the idea<br />
of leaving my comfort zone. At that age, I hardly knew that Europe existed,<br />
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