Sarah Gerard Wants to Build a Literary Community in Sarasota
New College of Florida’s writer-in-residence is organizing several literary events in the coming weeks.
Sarah Gerard IMAGE: JUSTIN LANE
Sarah Gerard says that she grew up writing. However, it wasn’t until studying English in college that she was motivated to pursue writing as a profession. Since then, Gerard’s first novel, Binary Star, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction; her collection of essays, Sunshine State, was longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. Now, Gerard is the writer-in-residence at New College of Florida, a yearlong position as a visiting professor at the institution.
But Gerard’s job doesn’t stop at working with her students—she’s organizing several local events to engage with the literary community in Sarasota.