Open Page with Sarah Sentilles

Why do you write? I write to make sense of the world – or at least to ask better questions – and because words are powerful, transformative tools that can help bring into being a more just and life-giving world. Are you a vivid dreamer? Yes. Where are you happiest? At the end of a long hike, looking at a gorgeous alpine view, listening to a river, smelling wildflowers – and then finding out my husband packed cold beers for us in his daypack. What is your favourite film? I have three favourites: Moonlight, Waiting for Guffman, and Amélie. And your favourite book? Toni Morrison’s Beloved. A close second right now is Ariella Azoulay’s book, The Civil Contract of Photography. Name the three people with whom you would most like to dine Jesus (I have a lot of questions for him, and I’d like to know what he thinks about how his name gets thrown around and put to use); Desmond Tutu; and Samantha Bee. Which word do you most dislike, and which would you like to see back in public usage? I don’t like the word ‘utilise’. I wish ‘accountability’ were back in public usage – and back in public practice. Who is your favourite author? I always freeze up when asked this question. Every book I’ve ever loved and read and reread vanishes from my head. I love Kent Haruf, Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, Louise Erdrich. And I’m sure my true favourite will come to mind as soon as this goes to press. And your favourite literary hero and heroine? I love Nao’s great-grandmother Jiko Yasutani in Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being. Which quality do you most admire in a writer? Imagination. The unexpected use of language that appears effortless. Showing up at the desk every day and writing. Name an early literary idol or influence whom you no longer admire – or vice versa. By vice versa do you mean someone who once admired me and now no longer does? You’d have to ask around. What, if anything, impedes your writing? Distraction. I sometimes give my creativity away worrying about the news. I have a habit of letting other voices determine where my attention goes. How do you regard publishers? With gratitude. What do you think of the state of criticism? Good criticism can make us all better writers – and point readers’ attention in new directions that they may have missed otherwise. And writers’ festivals? A thrill! Are artists valued in our society? They should be. We know the power of images to make people act (just think about pornography and advertisements and propaganda), so we might as well turn that power toward repair. In The Body in Pain, Elaine Scarry calls the art we make – the cup, the house, the sentence, the painting – ‘fragments of world alteration’. Artists remind us it’s possible to remake the world. What are you working on now? I’m working on a creative non-fiction project about adoption, belonging, and caring for the stranger. I’m exploring how the narrow construction of nuclear family may have limited the possibilities for what it means to be related to another being. I want to expand what counts as ‘kin’. I’ve been thinking about relationships between ‘strangers’ – the moon and the ocean, for example, or refugees and those who welcome them, or moss and tree bark. What if kinship is a practice that doesn’t depend on blood or likeness, but instead depends on one body’s willingness to take care of another body? Sarah Sentilles is a writer, critical theorist, scholar of religion, and author of many books including Draw Your Weapons (Text Publishing, 2017). She completed her undergraduate degree at Yale and both a Masters and a Doctorate at Harvard.

Why do you write?

From the New Issue

Three recent short story collections

‘Portrait of a friendship: In memoriam Katerina Clark (20 June 1941–1 February 2024)’ by Sheila Fitzpatrick

‘“Thin labourism”: How is the Albanese government travelling?’ by Frank Bongiorno

‘Rinbo Abdo’, a new poem by Philip Mead

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