Those walks across campus provide extra meaning for writer Ruby Wilson.

A former SDSU student and staff member, Wilson wrote a book that released in 2012 around the 100th Hobo Day called Campus Sketches. It combines Wilson’s poetry and photography to paint a vivid picture of various places on campus.

She was sitting in her office looking at one of her photos as her computer background and realized that she could combine poetry and photography together, and Campus Sketches was born. 

After meeting her husband at SDSU, Wilson moved around before coming back to SDSU in 1984. With an educational background in German and geography, Wilson didn’t think she’d end up writing and working in the Hilton M. Briggs Library.

Wilson remembers inspiration for the chapbook from the various things she would see or hear while spending time on campus.

“I would look out the window and see students in those quiet moments,” she said.

Wilson tries to read poetry and journal everyday to stay in the habit of writing.

After some time, Wilson penned another book that takes on life away from campus with At the Rim of the Horizon, where she drew inspiration from her time at home.

“I write about my life,” she said. “Inspiration comes from your life, I like to walk and that’s where things come to me.”

Before Campus Sketches was published, Wilson had a manuscript of roughly 60 poems that she sent to publishers. After not hearing back about publishing them, she started to take groups of poems and put them into separate chapbooks, which are small books containing, poems, ballads or stories.

“What is the point of writing when I just write it and stick it in my desk?” she said.

Wilson decided to take her poems and submit them to a New Woman’s Voice competition through Finishing Line Press. There was one finalist and 10 runner-ups. Wilson felt that even making a runner up would expose her writing.

Although she did not make the final cut, Wilson had her work exposed when Finishing Line Press offered to publish her book.

Aside from being published, Wilson is also extremely active in a creative writing group.  

“[It’s] important to be a part of a community of writers,” she said. She credits them for critically reading and helping her with her poetry.

On top of writing, Wilson likes to read writers from the area. “I look at writers I like to read, then write similar and see who publishes them,” she said.