Sherry Shahan
Oyster River Pages: How does your own writing or art surprise you?
Sherry Shahan: Feeling shipwrecked in 2020, I began ripping words from the heart of old magazines. My scissors were like me, rusty and dull. The glue, too thick. My collages resembled drawings found in a kindergarten classroom. I like that about them; it frees me from ideas of what art should be. My collages seem to spill into two categories: Those that pick at the scabs of humanity and those that reflect promise and possibility.
ORP: What is your favorite piece that you have written or created? If applicable, please link us to the site where it is published so we can share it along with your response!
SS: "Purple Daze: A Far Out Trip, 1965" is a historical novel in free verse and traditional poetic forms. It's a story about a group of high school friends and their sometimes humorous, often painful, and ultimately dramatic lives. And it's a story that plays out on a stage shared by riots, assassinations, and war in the City of Angeles, 1965.
ORP: Are you working on anything at present that you would like to share with your readers/viewers?
SS: A 60,000-word collection of personal essays written from the snarky perspective of an eight-year-old attempting to navigate an abusive family. Like many memoirists I first chose to tell my story as Vaseline-smeared fiction: "Purple Daze: A Far Out Trip, 1965" and "Skin and Bones". Fiction only perpetuated shame and made me a conspirator in silence. To reclaim myself meant the ruthless scrutiny of memoir.
ORP: Who is an up-and-coming writer or artist that you would recommend our ORP audience check out? Please link
SS: Poet Rhiannon McGavin: "Branches" and "Grocery List Poems" (both available from Not a Cult). She was Youth Poet Laureate of Los Angeles and nominated for the Presidential Scholar from the Academy of Arts.
ORP: What is the artist’s/writer’s greatest asset?
SS: The ability to be ruthlessly honest and surprise one's self.
