Serena Fusek was born and raised in New Jersey where, as she likes to say, her family "moved around from town to town as her parents attempted to avoid debt collectors." In 1968 after barely graduating from high school, but with five or six years of apprentice writing already behind her, she traveled to Europe instead of going to college. While living in Germany for two years, she travelled through Holland, Denmark, Spain, and England. After Europe, she moved south to Virginia, where she's since made her home base. She currently lives in Newport News, VA with her husband and a varying number of cats. She is still in mourning over her red-eared slider (turtle), Captain St Lucifer, who died September 18, 2001 at the age of 33. Still traveling a great deal by plane, car, and motorcycle, she has never gotten over the fun of moving around when she was young.

Since the early 1980's her work has appeared in such magazines as rawbone, Poetry Motel, Reflect, The Cedar Hill Review, Semi-Dwarf Quarterly, and Brevities. She has several chapbooks in print: The Color of Poison, Miles Melt Like Winter (about motorcycling to Florida for Bike Week); and The Night Screams With Jaguar's Voice. Her first chapbook, Three in the Morning Songs, is out of print. She and Paul Weinman collaborated on Motel Picaresque and Black Leather on Weekend Wheels. She has had one short story, a fantasy, published in Plot. In addition, she's written and published articles in regional magazines. With her husband, she's written and presented papers at computer conferences that were published in their accompanying journals. Some of her poems have appeared in motorcycle publications.

Serena has also been editor of two literary magazines. She worked as Associate Editor with the poetry magazine, Orphic Lute, from the early to mid-80's when the editor, Pat Hinnebusch, lived near her. When Hinnebusch moved to New Mexico, Serena became Poetry Editor of Proof Rock (published by Don Connor in Halifax, Virginia). She served in that capacity for five years, until Don no longer had the resources to publish the magazine. Moreover, she has taught writing classes and served briefly as a poet in a private school. She has written reviews of small press magazines not to mention her travels around the country giving readings, (Duluth, MN with Patrick Mckinnon; Pueblo, CO with Tony Moffeit; and Savannah, GA with The Chiron Review crew).

Although she has actually been writing about 40 years, some of her latest works are essays on creativity, a subject in which her interest has grown. In 2000 and again in 2005, she spent two months at the Helen Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, New Mexico both on writing fellowships.

From her interview:

PBR: What does writing do for you that nothing else can?

SF: I can't say for sure that nothing else could do for me what writing has, because writing is what I had and what I did.

In 1986,I told Tony Moffeit that I felt blind when I wasn't writing. He agreed that was a little like that for him. So the first thing I get from the writing is an ability to see. This goes back to the Hemingway exercise of looking at an event one sense at a time, using all the senses. It comes from the habit writers have of looking closely at every thing and every event, never knowing what might inspire the next poem.

First I perceive through my body. Then as I prepare to write, I drag the experience out of my body through my imagination and into my memory. Or out of my memory, back through my body and into my imagination where I can turn it, twist it and examine all the facts and facets at my leisure. Of course, I don't do this with all my life, but the practice teaches me to live mindfully. When I don't write for a long time, I tend to get careless about living mindfully.

Not all my poems are drawn from experience. Some come straight from my imagination (or so it seems to me). Other experiences tickle my imagination and make me examine the experience more closely. For instance: an old house in our neighborhood has become a historical destination, a museum piece. No one lives there now; it is maintained as it looked during the Civil War. It used to be the farm house of a local dairy farm where an eccentric old man lived. Every day that I go out, I pass the place--often going out of my way--because the house has become eerie. It keeps pulling at my imagination. There is a poem there, but despite several tries, I have not written it yet. So this is the second thing writing has done. It allows me to develop my imagination. As a writer I didn't have to give up using my imagination when I left childhood. Writing keeps the imagination conscious and allows it to expand, to develop and mature. Writing brought the imagination out of the realm of fantasy and into a place where it interacts with the real world. I think this has allowed me to grow mentally and spiritually. Of course, that may be just my imagination!

The last thing writing has given me is a sense of accomplishment. I have a body of work. I have published regularly. I have friends and relationships that began and continue because of writing. I have contributed my small bit to the world. I probably will never be famous. I may be forgotten after I'm no longer here to promote my work. But I did the work and there is a pile of poems to show for it.

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Here's a poem selected from her feature:

NIGHT OF THE GHOST DANCE

Night of fog and snow
draws around
my adobe walls--

snow that shines white
as the shirts
ghost dancers wore--

snow white
as the ghosts
who crowd
the luminous fog.

As I write
the lamp light
throws the shadow
of my hands
on this white paper.
I am not a ghost

though no one calls
my name
on this hushed night
of fog and snow

from which I draw
the black ink
of this ghost poem.