Sara Rauch

Sara Rauch is the author of WHAT SHINES FROM IT: STORIES and the autobiographical essay XO (forthcoming). Her fiction and essays have appeared in Paper Darts, Hobart, Split Lip, So to Speak, Qu, Lunch Ticket, and other literary magazines, as well as in the anthologies Dear John, I Love Jane; Best Lesbian Romance 2014; and She’s Lost Control. She has covered books for Bustle, BitchMedia, Curve Magazine, Lambda Literary, The Rumpus, and more. In 2012, she founded the literary magazine Cactus Heart, which ran through 2016. She holds an MFA from Pacific University. Sara teaches writing at Pioneer Valley Writers’ Workshop and Grub Street and also works as an independent editor and manuscript consultant. She lives with her family in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

Is your go to comfort food sweet or savory? Is it something you make yourself? Does food inspire your writing?

There is no food I find more comforting than cheap potato chips—the saltier the better. I don’t know if this is because I grew up eating store-brand and State Line, but the fancy, gourmet options—kettle chips in particular, but now also the extensive flavor options—make me roll my eyes. I mean, why mess with perfection? I like my chips flat and unadulterated! I have made my own potato chips, and I’ll admit, they were pretty good, but in the end, not worth the effort. Give me a bag of Utz, a blanket, a good book, and I’m set. If food inspires my writing, it’s entirely unintentional! I love to read about food—I remember a particularly transcendent experience reading Like Water for Chocolate at 17; I used to edit cookbooks—but when food does appear in my writing, it’s rarely sensual and almost always utilitarian. But I guess that makes sense, given my comfort food of choice. 

Vacation druthers… City or Rural destination? Why?

City girl, all the way. Give me bustling thoroughfares, museums, shops, people watching, public transportation, feet aching from miles walked, the texture of bricks, eye-catching graffiti, endless cups of coffee in tiny cafes—goddess only knows how I ended up living in the suburbs: I love cities so much! But, you know, a girl’s gotta compromise, and my husband and kids prefer the beach and camping and cabins in the middle of nowhere, so I get my fair share of quiet, middle-of-nowhere trips. Waking to the lap of ocean waves or the thrum of peepers certainly has its charms.

Favorite non-reading activity?

There are non-reading activities? (Just kidding!) I have a hard time picking favorites, but one thing I like almost as much as reading is walking. Walking and reading are similar, in a way, both are self-controlled and highly meditative, both can be done almost anywhere with a minimum of gear. I’ve always preferred the pace of walking over say, bicycling or driving, because I like seeing, and experiencing, the world on its own terms, with a minimum of filter. When I walk I’m attuned to sound, texture, subtle motion; I’m also most attuned to what I call “creative mind” when I walk—that part that’s always thinking about a story or a character or a scene but usually waits until I’m relaxed, present, and open to reveal its inner workings. Every poem, every story, every essay, every book I’ve ever written has been profoundly worked out over the course of miles and miles of one step at a time.

Do you collect anything, if so what?

Though I identify as a minimalist (in life as in writing), I am also a collector of certain objects. Perhaps because of this dichotomy, I feel somehow beholden to the objects I populate my space with. First, perhaps obviously, I collect books. Mostly fiction—story collections and novels—though since I had kids, I’ve also taken to picking up unusual coffee table books: one of my favorites right now is Moby-Dick in Pictures by Matt Kish, which my eldest loves to look at with me on weekend mornings; the book illustrates one line from each page of Melville’s classic, often using found paper. I also collect mugs, especially handmade ones—there’s something specific to each mug, how it feels in the hand, as if it has its own personality—and China tea plates in different floral patterns. I’m a collector of Tarot cards and sea shells and succulents—all of which come to me by “feel”: I don’t collect to collect, but wait until I am drawn to the object before taking it in. And last, but not least, I collect cats! Not real, live cats (though I do have a couple of those too), but cat-related things. This used to embarrass me, but lately I’ve taken to embracing it. I mean, I’m a cat lady and always have been and I’m not going to shy away from this fact any longer.

What brings you great joy?

I don’t mind if it’s cliché to say this, because it’s true for me that small things bring me great joy. The first sip of coffee each morning, the smell of my children’s hair, a cat purring on my lap, the snap of a book’s spine as I burrow into story, the smell of a sliced green pepper or tomato plants flush with August sun. Of course, I love “big” things too—the moon’s phases, a wild thunder storm, watching a red-tailed hawk hunt in our backyard—so maybe it’s truer to say that the simple pleasures are what I most cherish. A perfectly broken-in pair of jeans, an unexpected wink across a crowded room, slipping into fresh sheets at the end of a long day, watching a spider spin a web—our world is teeming with tiny miracles.