Sarah Gerkensmeyer to John Jodzio, one Pen Parentis Fellow to another

Today is the day of the changeover - we give a $1000 check to a new Pen Parentis Fellow at the season opener for our Salons. Ten seasons - it's astonishing. We are so thrilled and gratified at the wonderful response that we get from our audiences.  Our 2013-2014 Writing Fellow is John Jodzio, who flew in from Minnesota to read for us.  On the occasion of John's inauguration into our hall of Fellows, last year's Fellow, Sarah Gerkensmeyer, wrote him a letter. I reproduce it here for you...

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Dear John,

Congratulations on being selected as the 2013-2014 Pen Parentis Fellow!  I wish I could be there at the first salon of the season to welcome you to the family in person.  This letter will have to do.  I thought it would be most helpful for me to take a practical approach and let you know exactly how I have spent my $1,000 award.  While I hope the following budget breakdown is helpful for you, I also apologize because this is a selfish act on my part—as these notes will help me think through some of the things I am so good at avoiding (e.g. keeping close track of expenditures for tax purposes).

$457.98………………………travel to promote my new book, attend residencies, etc. (including  

                                                 airfare, lodging, food)

$50.27……………………….several pats-on-the-back of confidence and motivation

$29.34……………………….an astounding sense of community

$49.58………………………..a few late-night delirious moments of: “I am not a strange alien.  I  

                                                 am not completely in this on my own.”

$138.92………………………my first REAL pair of leather boots, for giving readings and talks,

                                                 feeling author-y, etc.

$34.26………………………..the reassurance that this talk of balancing parenting and writing is

                                                 not taboo or strange or petty or inconsequential;  

$99.99………………………..access to a built-in audience of folks who love literature (and

                                                 swanky hangout spots)

$60.88……………………….about two dozen doses of good humor, perspective, and humility

$56.74……………………….networking—I MET KELLY LINK

$22.05……………………….an entire year of stellar publicity for my work

$priceless……………………the amazing, invigorating, bold, inventive, spectacular,

                                                 kind, and imaginative work that Pen Parentis does to support the

 literary arts, and to invite someone like little old me into this wild,   

 wonderful world

I hope all of that adds up correctly, John.  But I’m a fiction writer, not a mathematician.  And even if the figures are slightly off, I hope this budget is enough to show you how amazing the honor of being a Pen Parentis Fellow truly is.  You are in for one beautiful year (and beyond).  So sharpen those pencils and wipe the smudges off the computer screen and get ready to spend big.

Best, Sarah Gerkensmeyer

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You can buy Sarah's book on Amazon through this link: 

and now, a word from our Fellow...

Sarah Gerkensmeyer, you will recall, knocked our socks off with her story "Monster Drinks Chocolate Milk" when she accepted her $1000 Fellowship. She has not disappointed us in her year of living writerishly (is that a word?) - she is currently at the Vermont Studio Center at a writing residency (yes, she has small children!) and she writes a guest-blog from there about an article that was in Scientific American last month...among other things. Her story collection, What You Are Now Enjoying, is forthcoming by Autumn House Press on February 15, 2013.

Please welcome: Guest Blogger and 2012 Pen Parentis Writing Fellow, Sarah Gerkensmeyer!

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“ScientistsDiscover Children's Cells Living in Mothers' Brains.”  I wish this were the title of one of my short stories. 

            As someone who juggles the roles of mother and writer (among many others), I was most definitely intrigued by this article in Scientific American last month.  I think that many parents who are artists spend a great deal of time thinking about the gulf that seems to exist between their work and their family life.  And this gulf can be so discouraging.  So riddled with guilt and worry.  Since becoming a mother, I've wanted to insist that my writing has opened up, that among the new joys and stresses of a family I can now conquer the world in my work.  And yes, there have been glorious, fleeting moments when I've felt this kind of spark, pushed into an urgent and intoxicating sense of discovery while writing during my sons' nap time or while they are away for a couple hours at school and daycare.  But often the negotiation of my family and my writing life seems fraught with imbalance and uncertainty.  I haven't read my four year old enough stories today.  I haven't worked on my novel in weeks.  If I let my writing slide, I'll lose a piece of myself.  If I devote myself too much to my writing, I'll become that nutty woman who locked herself in the attic with her notebooks and her Shirley Jackson and her Carson McCullers.  My two sons will never see me again—a mother who got lost in the wilderness of her stories.

            But then I read this article about fetal microchimeric cells that have been discovered burrowed into mothers' brains and bloodstreams and who knows where else.  I gave birth to two sons, but it seems that my babies never completely left me.  And what a comfort that is.  I wrote some of my strangest short stories right after my second son, Charlie, was born.  I was too overwhelmed during the sudden quiet of his nap times to try to dive back into the draft of my novel, and so I allowed myself to write very short and peculiar tales, little stunted creatures that I didn't  recognize when they landed there on the page right in front of me, the cursor blinking in confusion.  But I didn't care.  I was writing again.  And my new baby was asleep, warm and well. 

            Quite a few of those little stories ended up cementing my story collection together in unexpected ways.  Suddenly, I had a book.  I had a new baby and I had a book.  I like to think, now, that those newer stories are Charlie's in so many ways.  When I was huddled at the dining room table during his naps, hunched and desperate and spewing out odd tales, I wasn't fighting against the pull of my tiny newborn baby.  I was inspired by him.  When I was pregnant with him, those weird stories were in me, washing around and fusing together right alongside my developing son.  It's a nice, strange thought, isn't it?  That he gave me those stories to tell? 

            My husband and two sons dropped me off at the airport a couple days ago so I could head out to the Green Mountains for a two week stay at Vermont Studio Center.  I am lucky.  I have a generous husband who insists that I am a writer, not just a mother and all of those other things.  He insists that I deserve time on a mountain, with just my stories.  He insists that I fight through the guilt of leaving home, that our sons need to grow up seeing a mother do what she loves.  And I have two sons who are happy.  Who love me.  Who will welcome me home in two weeks.  But my family is also right here with me, my two sons especially—little bits of them burrowed into unexpected parts of me and my work. 

            On the way to the airport, Charlie (now twenty months old) chattered away in his carseat behind me.  He listed things, a mash of words I could recognize (horse, snow, mama, dog) and things I couldn't.  He was absorbed completely in the urgency of his language.  Now that he has started to talk, he often gets frustrated when we can't understand him.  He'll jabber a string of sounds that we don't recognize and he'll cry when we don't catch on—pointing at the television or the refrigerator or a stack of his books, a concrete need bursting to get out.  But I like to think that sometimes he's telling us something else entirely.  Sometimes he's lost in a long-winded diatribe that we will never be able to piece together.  Maybe it's the stories.  The ones that were swimming around alongside him when I was pregnant.  The ones I wrote after he was born.  The ones I haven't written yet. 

--Sarah Gerkensmeyer

2012 Pen Parentis Writing Fellow

www.sarahgerkensmeyer.com