We had the good fortune of connecting with Jay Halsey and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
Writing and photography are my main creative outlets. As a child, my mother took my sister and me on weekly trips to the library. I began reading the Hardy Boys mystery series, which I absolutely hated and could not relate to in any way. It wasn’t until I read S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders and Christine Sparks’ The Elephant Man that I knew I wanted to write about people and the struggles that most of us go through just to survive while maintaining some semblance of dignity.

During this same period, my stepdad took me on my first cross-country motorcycle trip from our home in Dayton, Ohio to his brother’s place in San Diego, California. I’d never made it out of the Ohio/Kentucky/Indiana tri-state area before then, so to see the country from the back of a motorcycle was a rush. He kept a point-and-shoot camera tethered to the handlebars so he could snap photos while riding. He began passing the camera to me and I got into shooting the long roads behind us, our shadows riding beside us, bouncing off the cornfields, and all the huge landscapes I’d never seen before then. That first trip was my introduction to shooting photos and learning composition.

My experiences working with at-risk populations, when I moved to the Denver area sixteen years ago, bled into my writing and photography aesthetics seamlessly, and I began approaching both creative outlets with as much honesty as possible. Confronting the hard truths of society overall and my own past, and creating with a candid approach, while not sinking too far in my own head, has been and always will be the biggest challenge for me.

Producing photos and writing from the deepest feelings of shame and harshest realities paid off in the form of my first photography and prose collection, Barely Half in an Awkward Line, which was first published by Really Serious Literature in October of 2022 to a good reception. A second, expanded edition is forthcoming from Agape Editions’ Haunted Doll House imprint in the fall of 2023. I’m proud of the collection and super thankful that publishers are willing to take it on and get it out into the world.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
All my friends know I’m a homebody so aside from dragging them along on a photo excursion, hitting up the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art, and dining at a couple of good Ethiopian restaurants on East Colfax and in Aurora, we’d probably just chill on the back patio and sip whiskey.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My life has been full of a cast of interesting people. From my mother, from whom I was estranged for twenty years, to the friends I’ve worked with who lived on the streets, to professors at community college, to local writers and creatives, to my partner, Hillary Leftwich: All of these individuals have been intricate in shaping my perspectives and my approach to writing and photography. I couldn’t be more thankful.

Website: https://500px.com/p/jay_halsey?view=photos

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yeslah.yaj/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jagainst

Image Credits
Personal photo “Jay Halsey” by Sarah Sebright All other photos by Jay Halsey

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