Episode 191 Notes and Links to Sarah’s Work
On Episode 191 of The Chills at Will Podcast, Pete welcomes Sarah Fawn Montgomery, and the two discuss, among other things, her early reading and writing, storytelling, growing up in Central California, the ways in which blue-collar Americans have been depicted-or not depicted in literature, and salient themes in her essay collection, like nostalgia, father-daughter relationships, cycles of pover...
Episode 191 Notes and Links to Sarah’s Work
On Episode 191 of The Chills at Will Podcast, Pete welcomes Sarah Fawn Montgomery, and the two discuss, among other things, her early reading and writing, storytelling, growing up in Central California, the ways in which blue-collar Americans have been depicted-or not depicted in literature, and salient themes in her essay collection, like nostalgia, father-daughter relationships, cycles of poverty and violence and trauma, and evolving ideas of home.
Sarah Fawn Montgomery is the author of Halfway from Home (Split/Lip Press, 2022), Quite Mad: An American Pharma Memoir (The Ohio State University Press, 2018) and the poetry chapbooks Regenerate: Poems of Mad Women (Dancing Girl Press, 2017), Leaving Tracks: A Prairie Guide (Finishing Line Press, 2017), and The Astronaut Checks His Watch (Finishing Line Press, 2014). Her work has been listed as notable in Best American Essays many times, and her poetry and prose have appeared in Brevity, Crab Orchard Review, DIAGRAM, Electric Literature, LitHub, New England Review, The Normal School, Passages North, Poetry Foundation, The Rumpus, Southeast Review, Terrain, and numerous other journals and anthologies. She holds an MFA in creative writing from California State University-Fresno and a PhD in English in creative writing from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She is an Associate Professor at Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts.
Buy Halfway from Home: Essays
Sarah's Website
Review of Halfway from Home: Essays from Kirkus Review
Split Rock Review-Review of Halfway from Home
At about 2:20, Sarah talks about her early relationships with reading and writing, and about how she wanted to write stories about often-overlooked working-class people
At about 4:20, Sarah cites some early favorite books and writers, and she analyzes the ways she reads a favorite, Joan Didion, now differently than she did then
At about 7:00, The two discuss class and how it is talked about in our society (or not) and represented in literature
At about 9:00, Sarah discusses how she got excited about writing-she shouts out to a high school teacher who gave a meaningful and transformative journal assignment and invited Sarah to keep writing
At about 13:00, Sarah references nonfiction writers who thrilled her in college-like Audre Lorde, Sandra Cisneros, and Jamaica Kincaid-and thrill her today, like Chen Chen, Ada Limón, Donika Kelly, Saeed Jones, Dorothy Chan, and torrin a. greathouse
At about 14:40, Sarah recounts the genesis of her Halfway From Home collection and answers Pete’s questions about making the individual essays cohere
At about 17:40, Pete summarizes the book’s first essay and its “dig sites” and focus on her father’s whimsy and her love of dirt-it’s called “Excavation”
At about 19:00, Sarah speaks to the significance of “excavation” in the first story and beyond
At about 21:00, Pete compliments the story’s “imagined ending” and Sarah speaks about its significance and background
At about 23:25, Sarah discusses the power and symbolism of fire and light, cold and darkness, as featured in her book
At about 26:10, The two discuss ideas of homes, serenity, and respite from traumas and chaos
At about 31:30, The two discuss her essay on cartography
At about 35:40, Pete muses
At about 37:00, The history of Sarah’s family in mines is discussed, along with the multiple meanings of “descendants”
At about 40:50, Sarah talks about “complicating humanity,” especially with regards to her grandfather and grandmother
At about 42:15, Pete asks about the end of an essay and how Sarah approached its second-person address
At about 44:20, The two discuss nostalgia and its connections to the essays, the intriguing concept of saudade, and nostalgia’s history as something to be discouraged
At about 48:35, Pete recounts how nostalgia has informed the podcast’s ethos
At about 50:45, Sarah confesses to being “anti-time” (!) and the two reference a classic Saved by the Bell scene
At about 54:45, Cycles of violence as depicted in the essay are examined
At about 56:45, Sarah reflects on how she sees and saw he father throughout her collection and in more recent times
At about 1:01:00, Pete notes the ways in which women in Sarah’s family are portrayed in her collection
At about 1:02:30, Pete compliments a beautiful scene with father and daughter and Sarah talks about the nostalgia associated with parents and childhood-Pete
At about 1:04:45, Sarah shares an interesting new project involving combatting ableist writing as default
At about 1:05:50, The two fan boy/girl over Alice Wong’s work
At about 1:06:15, Sarah shouts out her publisher Split Lip Press as a place to buy her book
At about 1:06:45, Sarah gives out social media/contact information
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Please tune in for Episode 192 with Donovan X Ramsey. He is a journalist, author, and indispensable voice on issues of identity, justice, and patterns of power in América; When Crack Was King: A People's History of a Misunderstood Era comes out on June 11, i.e. the day this episode with Sarah has been published.
The episode will air on July 18.
