This week I sat down with Annie Raab as part of the KC Writes Interview series. I know Annie from her fiction writing, but Raab is best known in Kansas City as an art critic at The Pitch and as the Senior Prose Editor for Kansas City Voices magazine. 
We had a great chat in her tree house of an apartment talking about:
- How invisibility makes you a stronger fiction writer.
- The need for bravery to write criticism. A more fearless critic & cowardly fiction writer.
- The secret reason she writes criticism.
- How she defines good art.
- The immediate satisfaction of writing criticism verses the long term gratification of writing fiction
- Why fiction is scarier than writing criticism.
- The most terrifying piece she ever wrote and the fears she had to confront before she could publish the piece.
- The world of residencies and the way the residency process works.
- And a little bit on the Pirate Women of Morocco
- The two poets that make her not dismiss the entire genre, Ben Lerner & Mary Oliver.
And she came out with a strong list of female KC Creatives to keep our eye on: Megan Karson, Anne Boyer, and Flannery Cashill.
Check out the whole interview at http://jessica-conoley.podomatic.com/
Read more about Annie at https://annieraab.com/