Interview with Sara Johnson Allen
Sara Johnson Allen has racked up some big awards. She received MacDowell fellowships and an artistic grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation. She was awarded the Marianne Russo Award for Emerging Writers by the Key West Literary Seminar for her novel-in-progress. The following year, she received the Stockholm Writers Festival First Pages Prize. And her debut novel, Down Here We Come Up, was the winner of the 2022 Big Moose Prize.
Down Here We Come Up tells the story of three women who have lost connection with their children. The reasons vary from adoption, alienation, and migration— one mother is separated from her children across a militarized border. It’s a sharply honest look at motherhood that wrestles with socio-economic instability and privilege. The novel is beautifully written and deeply felt.
I’m so glad Sara agreed to this interview!
Did you ever doubt this book would be published?
Oh my. Yes. Countless times I mourned that the time and energy put into this book over many years was for “nothing.” Of course, all writing is leading somewhere even if it isn’t published.
It was a long road to finish this book. A long road to getting an agent. Once it went out on submission in 2019 and had so many “almosts” but didn’t find a home, it was devastating. Then the pandemic hit. Like everyone else, I took stock of my life. I wondered if sitting at a computer in my free time beyond full-time teaching and raising 3 kids was really how I should spend the time given to me.
After that period though, the book was sent out again and taken by Black Lawrence Press. Everything after that is especially wonderful because I thought it would never happen.
I will say the awards I won along the way, and even the ones I almost won, or the “we like your work but this isn’t quite right for us” rejections were like guardrails that told me to keep going. As much as I considered giving up, those “nice” rejections haunted me into not letting go completely.
How do you juggle everything?
The juggle is hard. It’s like you are doing a difficult job (writing) on top of all your other jobs. And when you’re doing that, you’re often quite tired when it comes time to sit down and do the work.
I also struggle with focus, so I have to clear significant time slots between semesters and find the right space.
I really can’t be in my house. Or around people in my family, even if they are in another room. I can’t write at my work office because I shift into teacher mode. Whether at home or work, I can sense the things around me I feel guilty I’m not doing, like grading or cleaning or whatever. In grad school before all today’s responsibilities, I went to the Writers Room of Boston. It would take a fair amount of effort to drag myself there, but once I was there, I would stay for hours and hours.
I have found the best way for me is to go to a neutral space where there is nothing for me to do but focus on writing. That is often a hotel lobby or a library. I know people like coffee shops, but I like comfy couches and need to have a place I won’t risk running into someone I know. I am too social.
Sustaining writing for a major project like a novel is extremely hard for so many reasons. But once you have dragged yourself into the right place, you get into a flow and wonder why it was so hard to get there in the first place.
Any reading recommendations?
On book tour, I was lucky enough to partner with many talented authors. Melissa Faliveno’s nonfiction TOMBOYLAND, Melissa Crowe’s poetry collection Lo, and JoAnn Hart’s short story collection Highwire Act and Other Tales of Survival resonated especially deeply. There was something in their work that felt like “me,” like I was reading people who knew something about me that I didn’t know. It sounds a little strange, but I guess that’s just art connecting with your soul.
This fall I’ve loved The Witches by Stacy Schiff for page-turning non-fiction and Morgan Talty’s Night of the Living Rez for a visceral short story collection.
I can’t wait until I have time to sit down with Jesmyn Ward’s new novel Let Us Descend. She is my favorite author of all time.
Can you recommend a song (or songs) that ties into your book in some way?
Music is a major part of my process. Big time. I make playlists sometimes for different characters. I use songs on repeat to drop me into the right mindset to deal with a scene. I end a day on a song and use it again in the morning to try to get back into the same mental space. When I am reading and revising, I will listen to soundtracks with no words, to keep me from getting bored and to sort of underscore the work, the same way that music works in a film, to infuse emotion.
As far as specific songs for this book, Lord Huron’s “The Night We Met” was an early song connected to Kate and Smith, although their story changed over time.
Intellectually, I drew from “Wildfire” by Mandolin Orange, now Watchhouse, a group with roots in North Carolina. The song is not related to the characters per se, but it is connected to some of the underlying themes in Down Here We Come Up.
“Holy War” by Rainbow Kitten Surprise, another North Carolina band and the music video were on heavy repeat during the years of writing this book. I drew on the video aesthetically when I felt stuck, actively mining for images. That’s how Jackie got an oxygen tank.
If I had the time to navigate it legally, I would have included an epigraph from Rainbow Kitten Surprise’s song “Cold Love.” It would have been this:
What’s harder, harder to say?
That you want me to stay
That you want me to stay unchanged for you?
Chained to a lie, we’re the same, you and I, we’re the same
Not the same, we hurt differently, but consistent in our pain
Equal and equidistant in the way we laugh
To lay bare the weight of our cold love affair
-Rainbow Kitten Surprise (songwriter: Samuel Melo, 2015)
Thank you, Sara!