Sarah Viren
Photo by Charles Darr
Bio
Sarah Viren is a writer, journalist, and literary translator. Her essay collection, Mine, won the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and was longlisted for the Pen/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. She is translator of the Córdoba Skies, a novella by the Argentine author Federico Falco, and co-editor with Lina Ferreira of The Great American Essay, an anthology of the essay in the Americas that is forthcoming from Mad Creek Books. A former award-winning newspaper journalist in Texas and Florida, Viren is now an assistant professor at Arizona State University. She holds a PhD from Texas Tech University and an MFA from the University of Iowa and received a Fulbright student grant to Colombia in 2011.
Sometimes the person you least expect to get a fellowship is you. But then you get a call at 9 a.m. on a Wednesday in November from a DC number, and you think, “Who would be calling me from DC?” You pick up anyway, and when the person on the other end says she’s from the National Endowment for the Arts, you briefly wonder if she’s calling to personally reject you (that happened for a job once), but then you recognize how cruel that would be, and you allow yourself to feel grateful.
Writing is a profession of rejections. You keep writing because you believe in what you’re doing, even if it sometimes feels like no one else does. Getting recognized, though, makes that whole self-confidence act a little easier. Having your government recognize you is surreal. This fellowship will allow me to buy myself time—away from my kids (whom I love but who require a lot) and my job (ditto)—so that I can finish a book about a question I’ve been trying to disentangle for 25 years. I’m more than grateful for that opportunity. I’m elated.