Sarah Sentilles

What’s your advice to new writers?

My advice to new writers: Trust yourself. If you hear that voice urging you to the page, listen to it. Make time in your life to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). Believe you have something to say. The world is waiting for your words. We need your voice so we might imagine new possibilities and a more just and life-giving world for all beings.

Sarah Sentilles is a writer, critical theorist, scholar of religion, and author of many books, including Breaking Up with God: A Love Story. Her most recent book, Draw Your Weapons, was published by Random House in July 2017. She earned a bachelor’s degree at Yale and master’s and doctoral degrees at Harvard. At the core of her scholarship, writing, and activism is a commitment to investigating the roles language, images, and practices play in oppression, violence, social transformation, and justice movements. She has taught at Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland State University, California State University Channel Islands, and Willamette University, where she was the Mark and Melody Teppola Presidential Distinguished Visiting Professor.