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Deciding What to Feel with Life Manuela Amiouny

Manuela talks about her process and must-read Canadian SFF!

Deciding What to Feel with Life Manuela Amiouny

Manuela Amiouny (she/her) is a writer of speculative fiction and poetry with words published in Augur Magazine, Heartlines Spec, Small Wonders, and others. She currently lives in Montreal, on traditional Kanienʼkehá:ka and Haudenosaunee land, with her cat Maamoul. She is the Heartlines Spec poetry editor since August 2025. You can find her on Bluesky @manuelaamiouny, Instagram @manureads, or at manuelaamiounyauthor.ca.


Manuela is the author of “I Can't Decide What to Feel About This Life” from Issue 12.


Q: What does the form of “I Can't Decide What to Feel About This Life” tell the reader about the work?


Visually, the first thing meant to jump out is the indecision: A reader can’t read both sides of the poem at the same [time], the lines don’t quite fit together, and each side had its own tone and continuity. However, under the conflict I was also hoping to communicate that both sides still remain connected. Despite seemingly opposite views, both sides are part of the same whole and the poem isn’t complete until they’ve both been read, which is why they still share a few lines and mirror each other.


It was also a way to make readers an active participant in the “Decision” at the heart of the poem. I like to think of it as a “choose your own adventure” system — the reader has to decide which side they’ll want to start with and then, when the poem converges, they get to decide if they want to change their mind and switch to the other side, or stay on the same track. And if they read it again, will they then choose to read it in the same order? That’s entirely up to them.


Q: Tell us about your work as poetry editor for Heartlines Spec?


It’s been phenomenal: Heartlines is a small and wonderful team to work with. We look for SFF focused on long-term relationships: stories and poems that have both strong, rooted relationships and science-fiction/fantasy (yes, we’re greedy, there has to be a strong component of both). It’s interesting to see how this gets interpreted in the submissions we receive: We don’t have a specific checklist that defines what an “established relationship” is, so we sometimes surprise ourselves by what gets picked. If in doubt, I strongly encourage people to take a chance and submit.


Personally, I look for poems that are not afraid to lean into their SFF concepts and that have vivid and crisp language and descriptions. I tend to think all SFF is rooted in relationships: to each other, to our communities, to technology or the magic, to what makes our world, but it’s often an undercurrent so I look for poems that point a finger at it directly.


As for the editing itself, I’m only just getting started on my third issue, so I’m learning a lot. It’s of course very different from editing my own writing: I look to highlight what the poet is saying, sometime emphasize lines that I find striking. I like to add an explanatory note with my suggestions and the writer is completely free to accept or reject it. It’s a collaborative process, and I wouldn’t have accepted the poem if I wasn’t happy to publish it as-is. I’ve also had to say no to poems I really enjoy because they’re not quite a fit, which in turn has helped me feel better when I get rejections — I know it’s not personal. I’m very curious to see how I will continue to evolve over time!


It means a lot to me to take on this role and give back to the SFF community that has been very good to me. Heartlines Spec especially was my first short-story sale, so I’m very pleased to be back as a member of the team.


Q: How is the Canadian speculative scene doing in 2026?


Thriving! It faces a lot of the same challenges as the rest of speculative industry, but I am always pleasantly surprised when I find out a writer or a magazine is Canadian. I think I could go on for pages and pages so I will keep it brief and highlight a few things I’m currently aware of:



I’m going to my first Can*Con (SFF conference in Ottawa) this October, and I’m very excited to meet in person with people I’ve been chatting with online. Finally, I have to mention the Aurora Awards, which you should keep an eye out for if you’re looking for a place to start.


Q: In a few lines of prose, describe how you feel about this life at this moment in time?


It’s rough. I have days I’m so sad or angry about everything that’s happening in the world, it feels hard to care about the future or about daily life. But I’m also very lucky because I have friends and family that care about me and I am safe and I don’t want to let any of that go to waste.


Art is very important: Reading, and writing especially are the ways I remind myself of the kinds of futures I want to build, the ones I hope humanity will live in one day. It also gives me the energy and motivation to work on improving the things I can control, rather than to give in to despair. I make sure to stay involved in my community: to be present for my friends, my neighbors, my coworkers. No one can change the world in one day, but small improvements ripple and amplify over time.


Despite its hardships, life can be good, life is good and there will come a day where it will be good for everyone (except the billionaires!) This may sound a bit cheesy, but deep down, I will never stop to believe in that.


Q: What is your current and/or favorite book recommendation? Why?


Soooo many, I will cheat slightly and give you two:


  • The Half Drowned by Trynne Delaney: short, but it blew me away and the writing is poetic and beautiful. It hits that perfect balance for me, between sadness/anger/grief after the end of world and the hope and love that allows to still build community and a future.

  • The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin: “Human emissary on an alien planet” is one of my favorite plots and LHD executes it perfectly. I adore the connection between Genly and Estraven — from distrust to allies to friends — and how it colors everything we live through in the book.


Both of these are good examples on how to get me for people submitting to Heartline Spec :)


Q: How do you decide whether a poem needs a formal structure or whether it needs to find its own shape?


My writing process is a bit chaotic; as a baseline I start in free form and then decide on a formal structure after a few very messy drafts.


Formal structures are great for containment and boundaries: If my concept or poem-narrative is scattered, if the emotion or the imageries are more abstract, or if the poem draft is mostly built around one or two lines that I like just a bit too much, I know it’s time to introduce a form that will impose rules to my writing.


I really like your first question, because formal structures do come with reader expectations: Villanelles have a refrain, sonnets a rigid rhyming scheme, ballads are more song-like, etc. So choosing a form forces me to first consider “What am I trying to say with this poem?” and once I’ve answered that question, I can turn what is essentially a bunch of lines I find pretty into an actual poem.


Q: Has a reader ever told you what one of your poems meant to them in a way that moved or unsettled you?


I’m moved any time someone mentions they read my poem: The thrill of that never goes away (strangers reading my writing?? Incredible). However, I was especially moved recently, when a fellow writer mentioned on the Radon Discord that they had recommended my poem to someone as an example of a spec diptyche! First time this ever happened to me, and it still makes me smile to this day!


Q: What was your experience like creating your new author website? Any advice for authors looking to do the same?


I hesitated for a very long time because I didn’t feel I had “enough” writing credits to my name to have a whole website for them. I’d gotten lucky once or twice, but I wasn’t a writer yet, and on top of that, I had no idea where to start since I knew very little about building a website. Eventually, two things happened: I got tired of how things got lost on social media between algorithms and platforms changing or just not working well, and I realized that when on the internet, a website is the best way to combat the passage of time and not lose track of older works — and I definitely didn’t want my older poems to get lost.


My advice: Do it, make a website. It doesn’t matter how many times you were published; even a single story or poem is worthy of a page. Pay for a domain name if you have a little money to invest, because it will allow you to move or change platforms more easily, and it looks nicer. Finally, keep it simple and easy to update: There are several free platforms that are easy to use if, like me, you’re not a programmer, and a simple list with links is all you need to make sure your works are easy to track across the void of the internet.


Q: The most delightfully haunting phrase in your poem hits us right at the end: “a watched world never ends.” Which one or two lines hold the most weight in your mind?


I also love that line, I wrote it as a reassurance to myself! Another two lines that are important to me are:


“The best I can do in this state of perpetual emergency

is remind my cat to drink his water”


Fun fact about cats: They don’t feel thirst, so they genuinely forget to drink and they usually get most of their hydration from food. This can lead to a lot of health problems, so making sure they drink/stay hydrated is important. A seemingly mundane gesture is life-saving care, and if there are days where the best I can do is make sure that this small creature that lives in my house and that I adore stays healthy, then that counts for something.


Q: Was there any music (1-3 songs) that you think would make a good mini-setlist for your poem? Either ones that may have been on your mind, or ones that give readers a good idea of the themes?


All three songs were in my playlist while editing and thematically work with the poem!

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