Sass Brown
(1986-1988)
How would you characterize the influence of your YWW experience in your life?
I was 15 when I attended YWW for the first time, and it was the first place where I was encouraged to take my writing seriously. I remember having an intense, communal experience all three summers with both my suite-mates and my counselors. Later, when I was a residential counselor, I had a similar experience of ecstatic camaraderie. YWW was a perfect training ground to learn the skills needed to become an excellent teacher.
My first summer as a student in fiction, I wrote a funny story (it was really more of a stereotypical character sketch) about a young, would-be stud named Vince. I think I called it “Love and Burgers.” I read the story at our first writers’ cafe and I remember people howling with laughter. Some even dressed up as Vince for our dance that year! I try to hold onto that moment of joy, confidence, and even power as a writer today.
The next summer, after my father had died, I read a memoir about the last few months of his life. So many people came up to me afterwards, lending support and praise for being brave enough to share such an intimate experience. That was the summer I met my first mentor, Joan Bennett, with whom I kept in touch for years. Looking back, I am so grateful to her for reading and providing feedback on the installments of a novel, and offering encouragement with each letter. That generosity has stayed with me as a teacher critiquing student work.
What’s the best advice you can give a Young Writer (in general or in your specific genre)?
Read everything. Check out an anthology with a diverse group of writers and read around in it. Find the ones you like, and read whole books by them.
Be fearless. Don’t be too scared to say everything and anything. Just get it on the page and worry about editing it later. The next thing always belongs (that one I stole from Richard Hugo’s The Triggering Town); in other words: trust your instincts.
Be gentle with yourself; not every piece you write will be great. Sometimes you have to write through the junk to get to the gem.
If you are a poet, try to write in form every once in a while. Form forces you to make unexpected choices and relaxes your self-consciousness.
Honor your own writing process. In an ideal world, we all would write every day. That schedule isn’t feasible for everyone.
What do you find yourself most often reading or listening to lately and why?
All of my fellow writers from the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry; Denise Duhamel; Erika Meitner; Dorothy Barresi; Dorianne Laux; Lucia Perillo; Tony Hoagland; and Belle Waring. I’m also reading two debut poetry books: Blood Work by Matthew Siegel and Neighbors by Jay Nebel.
I read a lot of non-fiction on social and medical issues, memoirs, and too many fashion magazines. My main interest right now is the strange otherness of the body – especially the aging, decaying, or sick body, and the risky things we do to keep it well and beautiful – since I have been disabled by Lyme disease for the past five years. This is the subject of my next book.