Author of Spirit Things
2023 Sarton Memoir Award Co-Winner
Lara Messersmith-Glavin says she can’t remember a time when she didn’t want to write. As a child, she kept journals, wrote little essays, drew comics, started countless fictional projects, entered contests, and attended writing workshops throughout grade school and high school. “Writing was how I knew my mind best,” she recalls, “and though I struggled with confidence, I never doubted that.”
Her book Spirit Things, one of the two winning memoir entries recognized in the 2023 Sarton Award competition, is a collection of essays that examine the hidden meanings of objects such as nets, gloves, and lights found on a fishing boat, while also relating the uniqueness of growing up in the commercial salmon industry off Kodiak Island. As a child, alone on a boat filled with adults who were hard at work, she says the common objects she encountered became her jumping-off points for historical and mythological exploration. “If these objects are how I came to understand my world, what was it they had to teach me?” Lara asked.
As for writing advice, the winning author says she is suspicious of it. “I’ve received more advice than I can track or count, and almost all of it has tried to tell me that there is a right and a wrong way to be a writer. I think this is bullshit. All that advice serves to make me more anxious, less exploratory. I think it’s essential for an artist to get past the right/wrong way idea and just dive into what is there. For me, writing is about finding that live nerve within and working to uncover it so others can feel its jolt. The way in is different for everyone, and nobody can tell you how to do it or where to find that feeling.”
Lara adds, “The advice that I do find the most useful comes from artmakers. David Bowie, for instance, gave several interviews wherein he talked about the dangers of making art for others, for caring about what people thought of your work. Once you start flinching away from criticism or from taking the risk of being misunderstood, your work is dead—or worse, boring. If you want to be a writer, you just have to write. And keep writing. That’s it. That’s the secret. It’s just really hard, frightening work.”
But while Lara is suspicious of writing advice, she believes encouragement is useful, and that is one thing winning the Sarton award has given her.
“I think that a common anxiety among writers is who cares … particularly true when we work in the genre of essay and memoir. There is a specific vulnerability that comes from sharing one’s own personal story. Winning an award like this helps erase those doubts. The Sarton Award feels very validating, and I am dazzled, humbled, and so grateful that the committee took the time to read my odd little book. It’s also deeply meaningful to be in the company of other women writers who are supporting one another along their creative paths.”
Lara says that for many years she tried to squeeze her writing into the corners of her life, to fit it into the cracks of having a job, a child, a partner. Then one day she asked herself what if writing became her priority. “What would happen if, every morning, instead of making breakfast for others, instead of finding someone else’s socks for them, instead of answering mindless emails or reading the news or looking at social media, what if the very first thing I did was sit down to write? An hour and a half, or a thousand words. Monday through Friday, no matter what. What if?” she asked.
“What happened was the rest of my life shifted to fit. Nothing broke; the world didn’t end; nobody was angry. I just had time to write. I took myself seriously, so others did as well,” Lara remembers. “The discipline of it was good for me, and it turns out that an hour and a half a day adds up very quickly. Within a couple of years, I had written three books, and more continue to come.”
