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Interview with Cappy Love Hanson This spring, Astrid Salinas, who is majoring in Journalism and Media Arts on the Santa Cruz campus, interviewed Cappy Love Hanson. For nine years Cappy was part of the Cochise College’s Literary & Arts Magazine, Mirage, and is co-founder of the Cochise Writers’ Group, and a member of the High Desert Writers’ Association. She is the self-published author of the memoir Love Life, with Parrots, in which she talks about her personal experiences with her parrots and her search for a partner, among other personal memories. Astrid Salinas: When did you realize you wanted to write a memoir? Cappy Love Hanson: That happened in 2006. I had four parrots. Peaches, the one who had been with me for 17 years, passed away. He had some kind of disease, most likely cancer. After he died, I wanted to write a book to honor him. So that’s where it started, and it went on to my writing about the context of my life. In the beginning, I wanted to write pure anecdotes about the birds, but then I realized that they had saved my sanity and life so many times. I found the love of my life during the process of writing the memoir. So this book is also encouragement for people in their senior years; you are never too old to write or to find love. I was 57 when Dennis and I got together. Suggestions about my writing came often from my writers’ groups, Cochise Writers’ Group and the High Desert Writers’ Association. Salinas: What was the process of writing this memoir? Hanson: Here’s what I did: I sat down and wrote down a rough draft that included everything that I could think of, related to the birds. Just everything! I didn’t edit it at first. Then I went through the manuscript, made it much more readable and sent it to my
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