Lindsay Mayhew: Writing womanhood, breaking barriers, and embracing the creative journey

A Thousand Tiny Awakenings: An Anthology, edited by Lindsay Mayhew and Connor Lafortune.

Lindsay Mayhew (she/her) shares her writing journey with On Creative Writing in this interview, and reminds writers to always value their work. Lindsay is a spoken word poet and author from Sudbury, Ontario. She is the editor of A Thousand Tiny Awakenings with Connor Lafortune.

Lindsay is Hamilton’s representative for CIPS 2025, the multi-year champion of Wordstock Sudbury’s poetry slam, and a runner up in the 2024 Womxn of the World poetry slam. She has featured with the YWCA, JAYU Canada, Nuit Blanche, Wordstock Literary Festival, and others.

Lindsay is a recent English Literature Master’s graduate from the University of Guelph, and her written work can be found in the Literary Review of Canada, Moria, and multiple editions of Sulphur. Her work features feminism, mental health, and human rights advocacy.

Life experiences that shape Lindsay Mayhew's writing journey

Writer Lindsay Mayhew

On Creative Writing: What life experiences have shaped your writing style?

Lindsay Mayhew: My writing explores womanhood, feminism, and mental health. My personal experiences have shaped these interests and made me passionate about advocacy and change. I now write to break a lot of the sexist biases, norms, and ideologies that haunted my early youth. I love poetry because each poem is a world, and within that world I create my own rules.

On Creative Writing: Has your writing evolved over the years? If so, how? Through writing experience? Reading a lot? Writing courses or communities? A combination, or something else?

Lindsay Mayhew: Practice and reading have changed my style and execution enormously. Spoken word has made me more comfortable in my body and sharing my craft—there is little room to hide when you perform a personal piece to a room full of people!

My page poetry improved exponentially when I began reading and studying the poetry I love. Become curious about why a poet made the choices they did: why did they choose that form? Why did the line break when it did? Why is punctuation used in that way? etc. Poetic possibilities are endless, and the more you read, the more incredible craft you are exposed to.

On Creative Writing: Which authors and/or types of books do you like to read?

Lindsay Mayhew: I love experimental and modern poetry as well as subversive magical realism. I admire the imaginative ways that a writer will play with the page and language, as well as create hope, resistance, and resurgence. I fall into the worlds they create and uncreate. I love Billy-Ray Belcourt and Dionne Brand. I also love Full-Metal Indigiqueer by Joshua Whitehead and Content Warning: Everything by Akwaeke Emezi.

Advice for writers: value your voice and process

On Creative Writing: What advice/guidance would you give to writers?

Lindsay Mayhew: Your work is valuable and important. Everyday you will have to fight for the validity of your art, but you are creating beautiful potentials with every piece. Make time for your art in the busyness. I have also learned the hard way that our insecurities can be our biggest obstacle. Don’t stand in your own way.

On Creative Writing: Do you edit as you write, or write and edit later?

Lindsay Mayhew: This largely depends on what my end goal is. If I am writing for an event, submission, or commission, I am more critical. This gives me a final product quickly.

If I am writing to simply create or process an emotion, I try not to self-edit right away. I let my thoughts and emotions guide my pen. If I decide I want to edit the poem and explore it further, great! If not, then it was still a useful process for me. We often forget that we started writing because we love it.

Thanks to River Street Writing for helping co-ordinate this interview!