https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_7caUiJLzk&feature=youtu.be (Nickole Brown and Jessica Jacobs read from their new books at Iowa City's Prairie Lights Bookstore | Video courtesy of Poets & Writers) In a recent Arkansas Times interview with BOA's Nickole Brown (Fanny Says, 2015), and her wife, poet Jessica Jacobs, the poetry power couple discuss "their books, their writing lives, and the future." Both of them women, writers, and professors of writing, Brown and Jacobs dive into their shared creative experience of the difficulties they face writing during the semester: "As a professor, my first obligation is to my students," says Brown, "and if I give them what they need for their own writing, I rarely have time for my own. It’s just the way it is, and I don’t resent it. While the university is in session, I’ll scratch down a note here and there; I’ll write down ideas that I generally won’t be able to attend to until May, really. It’s very different than summer, when almost all my days are spent writing." Jacobs adds, "In a way, the semester feels like a period of gestation. . . . Right now, we're a month away from summer; I can just feel everything I want to write building, which is exciting." Working together, yet separate, Jacobs discusses how the two spend mornings and early afternoons in silence, allowing them to "enter a creative space." "During those blissful [summer] days, we’re unhindered by other responsibilities," says Brown, "we'll wake early and go outside, explore whatever woods are nearby. Jessica will run, and I like to shuffle my way along a trail. We'll go out for six or seven miles, come back, have breakfast, and read for a few hours. Then we spend the rest of the late afternoon and evening pushing words around the page." Looking to the future, the two discuss their plan to become full-time writers: "This life choice? Well, we made it because simply, this is it," Says Brown. "We want to give this writing thing a shot. If it doesn't work, I'll return to the job market, and that's fine. But at least I'll know I tried to be a writer full time. The key thing is that Jessica and I have each other. We have a vision of what we want and how we want to live, and we've got to take this chance." Click here for the full Arkansas Times interview. Fanny Says is now available at the BOA Bookstore.