Each week we will be connecting with our contributors showing where they have been, where they are now, and what’s up for the future.
Name: Marin Sardy
Title of Piece published in Sweet: There Is the Urge to Find Meaning
Issue: 8.3
Find her:
Marin currently lives in Tucson, Arizona and occasionally can be found teaching for Pace University in Manhattan. You can find out more about Marin on her website www.marinsardy.com.
What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication?
I wrote a book! The Edge of Every Day: Sketches of Schizophrenia is forthcoming in May 2019 from Pantheon Books.
Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re excited about?
My first book is a wide ranging, fragmentary memoir about my relationship to the mental illness that runs in my family (schizophrenia) and with my loved ones who have struggled with it. One of the chapters in the book, “There Is the Urge to Find Meaning,” was originally a short essay that was first published in Sweet.
Who is your favorite author?
I find that to be sort of an impossible question. To identify one that I like “best”—honestly, I don’t think I’m capable of it. I don’t understand how one would go about doing so. I think it makes more sense to ask, Who are the authors who made me? Here are some contemporary writers who have inspired me in recent years: Maggie Nelson, Lidia Yuknavich, Nick Flynn.
What is your favorite poem/essay/book?
Let me try another version of that question: What book gave me a vision of what kind of writer I wanted to become? Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior. But it feels weird even to highlight that one. I feel as if I’ve walked on a trail of books all my life, each like a stone in a creek, keeping me above the water. When you look at it that way, the idea of having one “favorite” seems meaningless.
What inspires you to write?
I write into the gap between my experience and the stories I encounter as told by others. I write into the places where my reality is not reflected in culture.
What is your favorite sweet?
Currently I am obsessed with Theo brand 70% dark chocolate bars with sea salt. Nectar of the gods.
Thank you, Marin, for taking the time to reconnect with us. We look forward to seeing more of your work in the future!
