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10 Questions for Sarah E. Vaughn


Some people speak of living through a climate crisis. Others simply go about their business as if nothing is happening. Both groups of people have more in common than they would let on, and the climate crisis might well inspire either to tell stories about events they would prefer to never experience again.
—from "On Watermarks and Fakes," Volume 62, Issue 4 (Winter 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
In elementary school every year we were assigned to write short fiction accompanied with illustrations. It was a tall order then, and would still be for me now. I remember two of the stories I wrote. One was about a girl losing her pet parrot and the other was about a girl with stage freight. While it was very difficult to come up with storylines I really enjoyed designing “book covers.” 

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
Zadie Smith’s fiction is a constant for me, Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table, and a short essay by Lauren Berlant called “On the Case.” I also think with images a lot. In particular, I have a soft spot for atlases with illustrations such as Obi Kaufmann’s California field guide series. So, when writing my first book Engineering Vulnerability, I consulted various colonial and contemporary maps of Guyana’s geology and rivers for inspiration.

What did you want to be when you were young?
I had the lofty ambition of becoming either a Supreme Court judge or marine biologist. I assumed that being a judge would, by definition, make my work consequential to somebody other than myself. I also imagined that swimming with fish and exploring their habitats would be a fun gig. I think neither worked out because I like to write more than anything else. I wanted to find an institution that would allow me to do that without (too many) restrictions. Academia seemed to be the closest fit.

What inspired you to write this piece?
To be candid, the last seven years or so of American political life inspired this piece. In particular, I’ve been taken aback by the grand gestures people make about their commitments to engaging people who do not look like them or who seem different. Such gestures have appeared all over American news media from issues about immigration to Black Lives Matter to COVID to the 2016 and 2020 elections. But such gestures are not only important because of identity and representation. They also demonstrate that people struggle to take accountability for the stories they tell each other. So, I began to wonder about why people choose to tell the stories that they tell, and why they believe some stories over others. Given my fieldwork in Guyana, climate change seemed to be a helpful theme for thinking deeper about these questions. In general, I think climate change lays bare the pragmatic skills people depend on to simply get by and make sense of the world around them.

Is there a city or place, real or imagined, that influences your writing?
James Baldwin’s New York City in Another Country. I think it goes without saying that the scenes of an intimate and cluttered New York City make the novel what it is. City/country are somewhat indistinguishable for Baldwin and that’s often how I feel in any city I live in or visit. For better or worse. I would add Barcelona to my list because it is one of the oldest cities I have visited and I am fascinated by ancient urbanscapes, particularly port cities. Along these lines I would be remiss if I did not note Chicago, if only because of its seemingly endless lakefront.

Do you have any rituals or traditions that you do in order to write?
I need to go for a run in the morning before I write. I am not a coffee drinker so running helps me wake up and focus. Sometimes I use my runs to work through the structure of an argument or manuscript. Also, I am not one of those writers who can complete multiple projects at once, so I practice a kind of priestly routine once I have an idea in mind. Two or three hours of writing each morning and later in the day I will read some to help inspire the next day.

Who typically gets the first read of your work?
Call me crazy, but usually the editors at a press. If I am lucky and the timing is right, a generous colleague.

If you could work in another art form what would it be?
Photography is the one art form I prefer over writing. I feel a sense of freedom when using a viewfinder to frame a scene. While lighting, gradient, and movement affect the way I photograph things, photography is much more intuitive than a technical feat for me. And if the image does not turn out the way I hoped, I can quickly try again.

What are you working on currently?
A manuscript on historical criticism and climate change.

What are you reading right now?
I just finished reading Richard Mizelle’s Backwater Blues: The Mississippi Flood of 1927 in the African American Imagination for one of the courses I teach. Between reading for teaching and writing, I try to find time to read for pleasure. I’m making my way through James Bridle’s New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future.


SARAH E. VAUGHN is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. She writes ethnography and nonfiction essays on climate change, environment, and technology in the Caribbean/Latin America. Vaughn’s writings have appeared in Orion, Cultural Anthropology, Annual Review of Anthropology, Critique of Anthropology, Comparative Studies in Society & History (forthcoming), among others. She is also the author of Engineering Vulnerability: In Pursuit of Climate Adaptation, forthcoming with Duke University Press (May 2022).


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