This year, I’ve decided to run a series of short interviews with some of the marvelous people I know or have worked with (or both), because I know far too many fascinating people not to share. Each person answers the same questions. All of them give thought-provoking, interesting, wonderful answers.

These are the people you’re sitting next to at this dinner party. Enjoy.

Heidi Knabe has been blogging at www.attackofthesugarmonster.com about life, fatness, and living with mental illness for over 10 years. In 2007 her guest post on Shapely Prose went viral and things haven’t been the same sense. In 2013 she appeared on the Fucking While Feminist podcast, talking about body acceptance, being naked on the internet, and why you should do the scariest things you can think of.

Please describe yourself in 25 words or less. 

I’m an ugly, fat, bitch! Other labels include feminist, bleeding heart liberal, loyal, blindly optimistic, and compassionate, with a bit of kink thrown in for flavor.

What are three things about you that most people either don’t know or wouldn’t expect?

I ghost wrote one of the first pieces on Huffington Post.

I used to have a collection off eight Kenny Rogers paintings. I plan to, one day, get an epic tattoo of Kenny, with the words, “You gotta know when to hold ‘em” in fancy script.

I really want to learn how to: knit, play the violin, juggle, shoot a gun, breathe fire, and accept the love and help offered to me.

Of the things you’ve done in your life so far, what are you proudest of?

My blog. Hands down. As much hate and rage that’s been spewed at me – and believe me, it’s a lot – I can’t stop blogging. I won’t stop blogging. Because mixed into all that vitriol are people telling me they went on antidepressants because I talk so openly about my depression. They went sleeveless because of my blog. They discovered fat acceptance and Health at Every Size because of my blog. One email was from a man who admitted to having been disgusted by fat people, to seeing them as subhuman. But, because of my blog, he realized that fat people are real people and that they deserve respect. But the one that just… ripped my heart out was someone telling me that they were planning to kill themselves but stayed up all night reading all the posts in my “mental health” tag instead. They thanked me for preventing them from doing something they couldn’t undo.

Honestly, my blog started as as my journal and I still see it that way. Even though I know, logically, that people read me, in my mind my audience is a half dozen people. It’s just my diary. And the fact that writing about my life and being honest about EVERYthing has impacted people’s lives in such huge, real, positive way brings me to tears. And I’ll take every horrible, hateful message the internet has to offer if it means one person feels better about who they are because of something I wrote. Because, to me, it’s worth it.

What’s an as yet nonexistent thing about which you’ve thought “why hasn’t someone created that yet?”

I’d kill for a magical robot who gives deep tissue massage.

If you could get everyone who reads this to do one thing, just once, what would you get them to do?

Do something you’ve been afraid to do. Fuck with the lights on, cut off all your hair, ask your crush to go for coffee. And, once you have done that thing, regardless of whether or not it went the way you’d hoped, NEVER forget that you stepped outside of your comfort zone and the world didn’t come to end because of it. You did something terrifying and you SURVIVED. And know that I am so fucking proud of you.

* * * * *

Hey!  If you like reading, and writing, and honesty, and beauty, and food…  why not subscribe to my new project, A Girl’s Gotta Eat?  

A Girl’s Gotta Eat is a cookbook for people who like to read, and food writing for people who like to eat, in the form of a 13-month serial… check it out!  It’s over 1/3 funded, and when we get to the halfway mark, there’ll be a special bonus for every single backer!