Interview with Nelle Yvon

5 days ago

6 min read

Nelle Yvon, author of Field Notes from a Cult, is this year's 2026 Lefty Blondie Press First Chapbook Award winner. We talked to her about her creative process, handling trauma & loss, and writing next to her dog Daisy.

LBP: What can poetry do?

Nelle Yvon: The first poetry I encountered as a child was the 1929 edition of 101 Famous Poems. Inside, I discovered Robert Frost, Edgar Allen Poe, and my first favorite, Edna St. Vincent Millay. All the books in our home were bibles or texts written by Herbert W.

Armstrong, the leader of the cult my family belonged to, so the fact that this book

existed in our home at all was a minor miracle. I read that book again and

again—finding new truths with every read. Poetry then felt like a puzzle to be solved,

or a secret whispered to me alone. Today, poetry feels like a way to make sense of the

intersection between memory and emotion.

LBP: Do you have a dedicated space where you write and create? What does this space

look like?

NY: I write a lot on the train to and from work in Atlanta. I sit by the window and think

about my in-progress poems. Sometimes I’ll take notes on my phone about edits I want

to make, or new ideas I’d like to explore. My notes app is a mess of random phrases,

words, images, and half-baked concepts. I like to pick one in-progress piece when I get

on the train and focus on it until my stop.

LBP: What is your writing routine?

NY: My writing routine is woefully inadequate. I hold my commute time sacred because the

days unfold unexpectedly sometimes. In the evenings, my daughter and I sit in our

family room with a comfort show on tv—sometimes that hour or two can be incredibly

fruitful. Between lesson planning and grading essays, creativity must be stolen in little

bursts, between dinner and bed, between teaching one class and another.

LBP: How has your relationship with writing evolved throughout your life?

NY: I started writing stories, songs, and poems when I was in elementary school, but never

wanted to write about myself because I didn’t want anyone to know anything about me.

In college, I wrote about places in California where I grew up but I never mentioned

the cult. Over the last decade, however, I’ve begun examining the first twenty years of

my life and how my family was shaped by Worldwide Church of God. I researched the

leader (Herbert W. Armstrong) and found that he lived extravagantly while the rest of

us struggled; I learned that the church attorney was making over $200,000 annually in

the 1970s. Theologically, the church led from a place of fear, isolation, and high

control. Delving into church history has been both therapeutic and maddening. I now

see the mechanism behind the control, the financial abuses, and the patriarchal

oppression that invited the abuse of women and children.

LBP: Do you keep the audience in mind when writing? What about when you submit

your work?

NY: This is probably terrible, but I do not think of my audience when writing. I think about

a particular moment or emotion, the context I hope to provide to bring a vignette to

life, but I don’t really think about the reader until the poem is about to be published.

Then, I have a moment of “oh shit—someone might actually read this.”

Nelle's Creepy Creation Inspiration corner

LBP: When not writing, what are your other hobbies or interests?

NY: I love visiting art museums. My mother used to take me to art museums with her, and I

always loved the quiet in those spaces and learning about artists new to me. A few of

my favorites are LACMA, MOMA, and the Museum of Fine Art in Montreal.

Travel, too, is a favorite activity. Next summer, my family and I will be going to Seoul,

South Korea, for the first time. My sweet husband, Eric, is game for the whimsy, too,

and I am so thankful for that. I often spend my wind-down time at night researching

destinations and planning family trips. Right now, I’m researching Mexico City,

Vancouver, and Beijing. Do we have the money and time to take these trips? No, we do

not. But I enjoy the research.

LBP: Are you working on something creatively now, whether new writing or other

mediums?

NY: I am working on a poetry chapbook about loss. In January of 2017, my husband,

Michael, died of pancreatic cancer. He was 41 years old, and our children were 12, 10,

and 7. The grief I experienced post diagnosis was the heaviest I’ve known. After his

death, I struggled to make sense of the world and my position in it. Parenting became a

solo operation during his illness and that was both exhausting and isolating. The poems

in this collection explore fresh grief and the emotional whiplash of spousal loss

through the five stages of grief with no sense of chronology because grief doesn’t work

like that.

I am also writing some CNF vignettes about Worldwide Church of God and the holy

days we observed. Specifically, I’ve been working on an essay about Yom Kippur,

when we fasted for 25 hours (no food nor water) and were encouraged to begin fasting

as young as possible to signal obedience. Another essay I’m crafting focuses on the

Feast of Tabernacles, an eight-day festival wherein congregants traveled to pre-

approved “Feast sites” to mimic the Israelites suffering in the wilderness. We attended

services daily, usually in a large convention center (upwards of 2,000 people would

participate annually at the larger Feast sites (like Palm Springs, Virginia Beach,

Toronto, Big Sandy, or Wisconsin Dells). Sermons dragged on for hours, usually, and

warned of the coming end. The hotels we booked were our “temporary dwellings,” and

every September or early October – depending on the Hebrew Calendar – I’d miss two

weeks of school to participate.

LBP: Any recommendations for us? Books, poems, indie presses to follow? What about

movies? Music? Museums to visit? Cool stuff we should check out?

NY: A book I read recently that has stayed with me is Out, by Natsuo Kirino. It’s a beautiful Japanese crime novel and the tension is fantastic throughout. All I’ll say is sashimi never looked like this before. Music is always part of my day. Some favorites over the last few years are as follows. Mitski. Aimee Mann. Kishi Bashi. Dan Mangan. Magnetic Fields. Durand Jones and the Inclinations. Big Thief…

Two of my favorite local museums are the High Museum of Art (which just completed a

beautiful Amy Sherald exhibit) and the Atlanta SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion +

Film, which puts on incredible exhibitions regularly. I love seeing what’s cooking in our

local museums and always try to visit a new spot whenever I travel.

I recently picked up Natalie Shapero’s newest poetry collection – Stay Dead – and it’s

sharply funny from the jump. A fantastic read.

LBP: BONUS QUESTION: How does it feel to have your chapbook out in the world?

NY: I am excited to have my chapbook out in the world! It feels good to have written about

this strange and often painful experience, but I know there are plenty of people out

there who can relate. I don’t think my mother would’ve liked Field Notes from a Cult

as she was still a believer when she died in 2024, which is a bummer, but she would’ve

appreciated the fact that I created something and that will have to do.

Nelle Yvon lives in Georgia where she writes poetry and nonfiction about the doomsday cult of her youth and high control fundamentalism, among other things. She enjoys teaching poetry in the carceral classroom and photographing turtles along the Chattahoochee River.