Miss Arlie Jenkins is a college student who is far more concerned cataloguing the various species of mushrooms on campus than actually attending class. That being said, she is a Religious Studies major with an emphasis in Philosophy. She also enjoys referring to herself in the third person.

If encountering her on the street, Miss Jenkins is immediately recognizeable. She is often spotted in a full-length tattered skirt and a sun-bonnet, murmuring something about how the gnomes seem to have run off with her copy of Camus' 'The Stranger' and her entire stash of dried mango and chocolate-covered pecans. Which she might find incredibly amusing, since she has noted that most gnomes exibit allergies to both mangos and pecans, and she could quite possibly laugh out loud. Of course, she often bursts into random non-gnome-related laughter at frequent intervals.

She can be the most easily spotted in her natural habit, that is... nature. Beneath trees, marvelling at the mottled pattern the sunlight through the leaves casts against her skin, or perhaps sitting by the lake watching the tadpoles, slowly swaying back and forth, humming a Nick Drake song horribly off-key, or perhaps enjoying lunching on a patch of delectable dandelions. Her second most common habitat is that of the used book store, book sale, antique or thrift store. Miss Jenkins is an easy target, especially in the latter, for she is easily distracted by shiny things and other such objects of distraction.

"But of course, you would like to know about my writing!" Miss Jenkins exclaims suddenly, jumping up, throwing her hands to her face. "Oh dear, you've been sitting here so long, listening to me prattle on like so, and without even a cup of tea or ginger snap!"

Once Miss Jenkins returns with said refreshments (pomegranate green tea and, unfortunately she was out of ginger snaps, so she substituted them for cream scones with cinnamon butter--Miss Jenkins is quite the baker, unfortunately a much better baker than writer), she sits down and smooths out the pleats in her summer dress.

"One must approach my writing the way one might approach my baking--that is, if it smells good, doesn't have any burnt bits, and is in a vaguely recognizeable shape, it's probably edible."

Miss Jenkins, unfortunately, becomes extremely silly when approached about her writing. It is difficult to pin her down, for she will most likely hide her face in her hands and giggle like a schoolgirl, then make an obscure reference to 'Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book', then insist on retrieving her copy to illustrate her point.

But once the fairy diversions are past and all of the scones have been devoured from the platter, Miss Jenkins feels up to business. She sits in the grass in the sunlight, petting her three-and-a-half legged puffball of a mutt named Tripodling (Emily for short), and says, "My stories are me. That being said, the characters are not me--heavens, the second I write an Arlie-based character is the second I have completed all of Proust's 'In Search of Lost Time'! Which is to say... possible, but unlikely."

Miss Jenkins continues to her small garden and watches with a mute, gentle smile as Tripodling munches on a healthy bunch of flat-leaf parsley. "My writing is most analogous to Greta Garbo, I suppose. It wants to be alone. It loathes genres and, stylistically, it dooms itself every time. It is not grand adventure, nor an important quest. The characters are familiar yet foreign, unique but precedented. But I suppose what I am most interested in communicating is life and life only."

A possible copyright infringment of Bob Dylan aside, Miss Jenkins is an author of exceptional imagination, if only she could be bothered to commit it to paper. "Such a tricky little thing, imagination!" she exclaims over an open composition book. "Perhaps if I put little thimblefulls of honey on the paper it would stick this time..."