Episode 179 with Sarah Cypher, Skilled and Thorough and Thoughtful Chronicler of The Long Reaches of History, Identity, and ,What Constitutes Home

Episode 179 Notes and Links to Sarah Cypher’s Work   

 

   On Episode 179 of The Chills at Will Podcast, Pete welcomes Sarah Cypher, and the two discuss, among other things, Sarah’s early reading and writing and the artistic gene she inherited, finding herself (or not) in her adolescent and college reading, the research needed for her book, Palestine as a muse, and motifs and themes of identity, the pull of home, exile, familial strife from her wonderful debut novel.

 

   Sarah Cypher is a freelance book editor and author of The Skin and Its Girl. She has an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, where she was a Rona Jaffe Graduate Creative Writing Fellow in fiction. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, New Ohio Review, Majuscule, North American Review, LEON Literary Review, Crab Orchard Review, and others. She grew up in a Lebanese Christian family near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and lives in Washington, D.C., with her wife.

 

Buy The Skin and its Girl

 

Sarah Cypher's Website

 

Sarah’s Substack

 

Kirkus Reviews for The Skin and its Girl

 

 

 

At about 2:20, Sarah talks about her mindset as the book comes out this week and her love for those helping with the cover (check out her Substack article about the cover process), editing, and promotion 

 

At about 4:20, Sarah points to an artistic strain in her family and connects her writing and the book’s art

 

At about 5:20, Sarah gives background on her love of reading and writing and relationship with language growing up

 

At about 7:30, Sarah speaks about queerness as often treated as “unspeakable” when she was growing up and how she “found herself”

 

At about 9:30, Sarah discusses “resistance” in this time of banning books and censorship and homophobia  

 

At about 11:30, Pete and Sarah get very grammary as Pete points out some subtleties that make Sarah’s book so good 

 

At about 13:15, Sarah reflects on “exploring voices outside of [her] own”

 

At about 15:00, Sarah shouts out Patricia Engel, Rachel Cusk, and Katie Kitamura, among others, as some of her favorite and inspiring contemporary writers

 

At about 17:40, Sarah responds to Pete’s question about muse(s) for her project and research and seeds for the book by giving background on the book’s history and her own life experiences as a second-generation Arab-American (“before 9/11 and after 9/11”)

 

At about 22:00, Sarah details her connection to the famous soap from Nablus in Palestine

 

At about 24:15, Pete quotes the book’s epigraph and asks Sarah about its significance to “return” and home

 

At about 26:10, Sarah speaks to the book as “epistolary/” “direct address” and muses on how queer literature often uses direct address structures

 

At about 28:25, Sarah reflects on the connections between the Tower of Babel story and Nuha Rummani’s take on the story’s morals and buildings/towers as motifs

 

At about 31:10, Pete details the book’s opening sequences and discusses Betty’s dramatic birth

 

At about 32:50, Pete and Sarah discuss Tashi and her traumas and her background 

 

At about 36:15, Sarah talks about how Tashi and her life are burdens/gifts from the family’s history and lineage

 

At about 37:40, The two discuss coincidences and meanings with Betty being born the day that the family soap factory was destroyed; Sarah connects to The Battle of Nablus in 2022

 

At about 41:20, Sarah speaks to ideas of “aftermath” in her work

 

At about 42:10, Pete outlines Nuha’s stories and their morals and her rationale; some of these stories include the parallel storylines between Alissabat and Betty 

 

At about 44:10, Sarah is asked about Nuha’s character with regards to ideas of openness and living her truths 

 

At about 47:30, Pete relates the saga of Betty’s schooling

 

At about 49:10, The two discuss ideas of difference in its many iterations and assimilation

 

At about 50:00, Sarah talks about those who “bullied” their way into the story in response to Pete’s compliments about strong women

 

At about 53:00, Pete and Sarah reflect on ideas of “long memories” and history’s long reach

 

At about 57:10, The two meditate on the “pull of home” and shifting concepts of “home”

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  Please tune in for Episode 180 with Jennifer Dawn Carlson. She is author of  Merchants of the Right: Gun Sellers and the Crisis of American Democracy, and Associate Professor of Sociology and Government & Public Policy at the University of Arizona, and a 2022 MacArthur Fellow.

    The episode will air on May 2, the Pub Day for her book!