by Rebecca Doverspike

On Thursday, October 3rd, we received a rare treat as fiction writer and teacher Sarah Gerkensmeyer read from her collection of short stories, What You Are Now Enjoying, and gave a thoughtful talk titled “Writing the Unknown.” Sarah’s welcoming handout, illustrated with artful mythical creatures and fitting quotes related to mystery, warmed me right away to what she had to say. I drew stars next to many of the quotes while waiting for her talk to begin, but my favorite was George Saunders’: “Don’t be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die, world without end, amen.”

Sarah read a short story, “Hank,” that she’d written while in graduate school at Cornell. Her sentences took surprising turns, they had interesting edges—sometimes quick corners and other times smooth curves—a mixture of humor and insight. Listening to her read felt like walking, where one’s pulse quickens for a time rounding a corner, then rests for a while at an even pace, and then turns again, subtly. Purposeful wandering, as we angled into the world and the characters in it from baby Hank’s perspective.

After reading, Sarah spoke with openness and warmth about the importance of mystery in the writing process. “Hank” illustrated, for her, a story in which she felt completely lost and truly wasn’t sure what would happen next as she was writing. As a listener, I appreciated this sense of wandering whilst also never feeling led astray by the sentences—her language did not take a misstep.

We were able to ask Sarah several questions. Sarah’s narrative about publishing her book years after graduate school gave hope. She also said that while she didn’t publish much during graduate school, that all the work she accomplished during her MFA program was in her book, explicitly (as in the case of “Hank”), or implicitly. As my thesis advisor said to me once, “It’s a mountain, but you’re on it; you’re climbing.”

In part of her response to a question about how she balances writing with having small children, Sarah spoke about an MFA program as a blessing in terms of having time to write. “And perhaps it’s just time in hindsight,” she admitted, but it had a grounding effect: indeed, we do have time here and now to focus on our writing, and what a good and important reminder.

I asked Sarah how she balanced not-knowing with structure and she spoke about the scaffolding of different lengths; experimenting with short form helped her play with structure in a way that also allowed mystery in the writing process. Because Sarah taught composition at WVU, she also answered questions about teaching and possibilities for creative writing pedagogy in the composition classroom.

Another visiting writer, our Sturm Workshop teacher for the week, Janisse Ray, also attended Sarah’s talk and asked her questions about that short form, thinking of some of the nonfiction essays we’d been reading. It was exciting to hear a dialogue that connected our visiting workshop leader’s nonfiction aesthetic with another visiting writer’s short story form.

Sarah also responded to questions about marketing—she articulated how many writers are introverted and how far out of our comfort zone we move when we must “market” ourselves and/or our work. I appreciated such a refreshing and honest take on the publishing world—I admired how authenticity was something important to her. She told us how she found ways to market herself that didn’t feel inauthentic. For example, she mentioned a website that advertised stories as different home-brewed beers, with a description of each story’s components.

At lunch following Sarah’s reading and Q & A, as the talk of teaching, sonnets, and agents dimmed and the food on our plates diminished, I told Sarah that uncertainty is something I think about a lot. “I had a religious studies teacher in college who articulated one of the most important questions in my life. She asked, ‘Can one act ethically from a place of uncertainty?’” Those of us at the table with Sarah then discussed different kinds of uncertainty. In the case of my teacher’s question, “uncertainty” did not refer to ignorance, but a gathering of information—as much as possible—and an admittance of still, fundamentally, not knowing. I told Sarah I so liked that overlap, mystery and unknowing, between Buddhism and writing—an intersection of my interests. Writing, too, can be a process of undoing assumptions and opening. She brightened at the question (it can have that effect) and said her husband, a philosopher and teacher, would also love that consideration and that she’d relay it to him. I wrote her a check for her short story collection, and she signed it with a phrase that stays (for writing and life): “Embrace the unknown.” I was struck throughout the lunch time conversation with how many times something piqued Sarah’s interest, and how she would say, “I don’t know anything about that, but…” when it was clear she did know some, in a way, but that what she didn’t know intrigued her further, and her humility became ever-evident.

Those of us who bought a copy of Sarah’s book also received a coaster—another innovative marketing route that didn’t compromise authenticity. Of course, in knowing Sarah for just little over an hour one can see how authentic she is, and as such, I’m not sure there’s anything that could compromise that. It was refreshing to see how one’s personality can supersede business concerns rather than the other way around.

A day or two later, as I was working on revising an essay, I thought of Sarah. “I feel lost with this one in a way that Sarah would approve of,” I wrote to a mentor and friend. It was a good lost, an immersion, a trust that the language would find its way and learn to shine if I didn’t force it to be something it was not.

Sarah Gerkensmeyer’s story collection, What You Are Now Enjoying, was selected by Stewart O’Nan as winner of the 2012 Autumn House Press Fiction Prize and was longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. A Pushcart Prize nominee and a finalist for the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction and the Italo Calvino Prize for Fabulist Fiction, Sarah has received scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Ragdale, Grub Street, and the Vermont Studio Center. Her stories have appeared in Guernica, The New Guard, The Massachusetts Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Cream City Review, among others. Sarah was the 2012-13 Pen Parentis Fellow. She received her MFA in fiction from Cornell University and now teaches creative writing at State University of New York at Fredonia.

Click here to view a PDF of Sarah Gerkensmeyer’s Handout: Sarah Gerkensmeyer