Sasha Borislow graduated from Northview High School in 2022. In high school, she was a prominent member of Troupe 6577 and served as president of Northview’s improv club!
Sasha Borislow now attends Oberlin College of Arts and Sciences as a creative writing major. She continues to be a part of improv as a member of Oberlin’s Sunshine Scouts!
To find more of her artwork, check out @rotary.magenta.art on Instagram!
Without further ado, here is the world through a writer’s eye.
Sasha Borislow | photography
“I’m a slow writer. I take time to marinate in the ideas.”
— Sasha Borislow
In her recent months at Oberlin, Sasha has become more of a planner when it comes to writing. She often finds her ideas in writing prompts online or takes inspiration from other artists or writers on social media. For her most recent work, Sasha found inspiration when scrolling through fanart on social media. While she didn’t belong to the fandom, she found herself crafting her own stories for the characters she saw.
“I didn’t know who these characters were, so I decided to steal them for myself,” she says. Soon after, Karina, Luca, Emmett, Amara, and Adri were born. Through a split point of view story, Sasha aims to tell the story of protagonists Karina and Luca and the magical connection that binds them.
In the writing world, there are popular terms used to characterize the style of writer you are: plotters, pantsers, or plantsers. Plotters aim to develop their entire plot and character arcs before writing, while pantsers write as inspiration strikes them. Plantsers have qualities of the both aforementioned categories; they might plan a skeleton structure for their story before jumping into their writing. When asked about the change, Sasha said “I used to be more of a pantser, just write whatever I was feeling– one off scenes and fit those into a storyline. Recently I’ve become more of a planner. I’ve turned into more of a perfectionist over the years. Writing takes me into a whole different direction than I was planning on at first.”
Sasha Borislow | digital
Sasha Borislow | digital
When we were assigned our second webpage, I was quick to ask another one of my artist friends. I have known Sasha for years, and I constantly saw her doodles on the edge of sheet music in choir or in the margins of her math homework. In the posts on her art account, I found diverse casts of characters from fandoms I’d never heard of. Yet, when I asked her about them, when I asked her for an interview, I was met with different answers than I had expected.
“I always considered myself an author,” she said. That cast of characters was not from some obscure piece of media, but her own stories.
“I started art before I started writing– just as soon as I could hold a pencil,” she stated. Yet it was in the creation of storylines that she found the most joy. While her art account (@rotary.magenta.art) features popular characters from Encanto and Our Flag Means Death, Sasha found the experience of creating original characters (often referred to as OC’s in the art/writing community) far more rewarding. “I started with original characters, but they’d always be a one-offs.”
While she had always been writing, she began taking writing more seriously in middle school; “I’m going to write a whole novel,” she told herself. In high school, she began to take the challenge more seriously, and much of her art was inspired by these larger works, including one of her most recent pieces featuring a cast of five characters.
For the past few months, Sasha has been planning her untitled work featuring Luca and Karina, but with National Novel Writing Month, she hopes to take the plunge into writing. Often abbreviated to NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month occurs every November and encourages writers of all ages, genres, and experiences to find their voices and develop creatively. For this NaNoWriMo, Sasha set a goal for 10,000 words.
While I walked into this interview with a preconceived notion of what artists and writers are, Sasha showed me the intersection between the two groups. While art and writing are both incredibly large parts of her life, it’s writing that defines her perspectives.
Sasha Borislow | digital
Sasha Borislow | digital
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