About Me

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” Albert Einstein

Hello and welcome to my little corner of the interweb! My name is Crystal Anderson and I’m a grant writer, essayist, and (as-yet-unpublished) novelist. I started this blog as a way of motivating myself to practice and share my creative writing with more immediacy, and to produce a body of work I can point to instead of referencing my degree (MFA, BYU 2013) and leaving it there.

On a deeper level, I’m hoping to grow a sense of meditative wonderment in the world around me. This blog is for optimists, people who are tired of being told what to do, who are searching for wonder and beauty and grace in the world around them and want a place to share that grace, and relax into just savoring wonder. This will be a breathing space for people to just stop and witness the weirdness of the world. I hope you’ll join us!

Facts about me:

1. I identify as goth. My optimism is tied to my fascination with the macabre. Wallace Stevens wrote, “Death is the mother of beauty. Only the perishable can be beautiful, which is why we are unmoved by artificial flowers.” I cackle about corvids, enjoy reminding people that skeletons live inside all of us, dream about visiting transi tombs in France and jewel-encrusted saints in Germany, and rejoice when the Halloween decorations come out in the stores every August. I expect a great many of the essays herein will be Memento Mori, or will be otherwise darker in sensibility than the usual thoughts of the general populace.
2. I am a third-culture kid. I spent ten years of my childhood living in Bangkok, Thailand, yet I am an American of primarily Swedish and German descent, with ancestors who arrived on the Mayflower, others who crossed the Great Plains in covered wagons, and still others who came through Ellis Island. My parents are both from northern states, but the six childhood years I remember spending in America were spent in deep south Louisiana and southeast Texas. My cultural identity is… complex. As a result, much of what arrests my interest has a decidedly Southeast Asian flavor to it. I’m also moved by cross-cultural hybridization and art that attempts to navigate the spaces between cultural experiences.
3. I prefer lists in threes. For better or for worse.

I live with my boyfriend, Andrew, and my cat, Athena, in Las Vegas, Nevada, where we spend the winter months gloating to our snowed-in relatives and friends, and spend the summer months hiding from the scorching sun and the tourists. I’m writing a high fantasy/horror novel series that may or may not ever see the light of day.

And I’m happy to welcome each and every one of my readers. Thank you for being here!