Elizabeth Ellen Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard): #250 Andrea Kneeland

Andrea Kneeland was born in Hayward, California in January of 1980, which means she just turned thirty. Andrea grew up without siblings and her childhood was difficult and isolating. She didn’t do things most other kids did, like go to slumber parties or high school or prom. When she was thirteen, her first real boyfriend held a loaded gun to her head. At the time, she didn’t think this was strange and didn’t break up with him. She thinks this says a lot about how she viewed relationships the first twenty-five years of her life. When she was fifteen, she enrolled in community college. When she was eighteen she met her first husband, whom she married two years later. She doesn’t like to talk about either her childhood or her first marriage publicly. Her second husband told her when he left that he’d kill himself if he had to stay married to her. He had been abusive for a while at this point, and her friends no longer liked to be around them. Andrea believed she was being patient, waiting for things to go back to how they were in the beginning. She would try to hug her husband and he would push her to the ground. She didn’t understand this was an unacceptable way to be treated. These sorts of relationships were all she knew, and thus what she preferred. It wasn’t until she got out into the world and saw how other people lived that she understood what it means to be treated with kindness and respect. She had to learn to value herself, which is something she still struggles with today. When she was in her mid-twenties, Andrea went back to school and got her bachelor’s degree in Anthropology. She had intended to study Creative Writing, but didn’t find the classes particularly interesting or useful. She preferred Anthropology, which was similar to Creative Writing in that in Creative Writing you take things that are not real and make them seem real and in Anthropology you take things that are real and make them seem not real. Since then, Andrea has published many stories online and in print, but the one she is most proud of and which she feels is most representative of her is “Pinocchio Discovers Jealousy,” as it touches on the themes she finds herself most obsessing over: birds, fairy tales, misogyny, technology, memory, sex, torn apart relationships, and anatomy. Mostly, Andrea just wants to write stories and poems that are beautiful but accessible, so that when people read them they say, “Oh, that’s beautiful because it’s so strange, but it’s even more beautiful because the strangeness is so familiar.” Andrea feels similarly about birds. She thinks there is very little difference between reading a poem and watching a bird in flight. Andrea currently lives in San Francisco and has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area her whole life. She can’t imagine living anywhere else. Five months ago, Andrea met a man through an online dating service and she loves him like crazy and thinks it’s one of the luckiest things that’s ever happened to her. Together they plan on making a trip to Spain later this year. It will be the first time Andrea has left the country. She is excited to see what Spanish birds look like and is happy her boyfriend speaks Spanish so she won’t have to learn another language.

[Andrea Kneeland is an editor at the great Hobart and here is her chapbook in the fine Fox Force 5.

[Note: You can read Elizabeth Ellen's postcard life story here.]