Chelsea Schott is an English Teacher living in Texas. A recent graduate of Rice University and President of the Rice MLS Writer’s Group, she divides her time between conducting workshops and teaching writing craft. When not writing her own stories you can find her at home, curled up with a children’s book reading and writing fables with her own children, Michael, 13 and Frances, 3. All three read and write together, composing, editing and frequenting used book stores, creating tales to share. It is directly from these experiences that Schott began to record her own childhood stories.
When writing the piece, “Delilah” for My Other Ex, Schott considered friendships and why some dissolve and others do not:
“I think in this piece, the main character struggles with expectations and capabilities. She fails Delilah. She fails herself. [I think] when we cause the suffering of someone we love, the heavy-laden guilt that results is enough to change the dynamic of any friendship of simple-love to something more martyr-like. There’s an unspoken obligation. The result is not an overwhelming thankfulness, but shame. The kind of shame so deep-rooted and dark, we turn our face from the mirror, from the light, lest we face who we truly are. Friendships can bring out our best nature—to nurture and love, or our worst digressions—into abandonment, blame and loss. This piece deals with all those missteps.”
Schott is a new and emerging writer. In addition to My Other Ex, you can find her writing in such fine journals as Under the Gum Tree, The Winter Tangerine Review and Germ Magazine. You can follow her literary musings on Twitter and Facebook.