“I would memorize paragraphs in my head”: Sara Nović on her career as an author and instructor
“I didn’t start writing because I thought I would make money—I did it for the way it made me feel and the way I wanted to make others feel.”
My conversation with Sara on becoming a New York Times bestseller, letting go of the ‘big writer’ advice that didn’t fit her life, the expectations that came with being the first in her family to attend college, why not initially knowing much about the business side of a career in writing was actually an advantage, how she made time for her work in the face of competing demands as a new mother, unlearning productivity as a metric of worth, & so much more.
“My hearing loss was not cinematic—no hit to the head rendered my world silent. Mine was slow, uneven, deceptive as a switchback trail. One day, I lost the wind. Then the drip of a leaky faucet. Then whispers.” So begins Sara’s latest book, the memoir Mother Tongue, in which she retraces her path out of the hearing world and into the deaf community.
The glowing responses have already been pouring in. In a starred review, Publisher’s Weekly has hailed it as a “must-read,” calling it a “lucid” and “rigorously researched … critique of the systems that have marginalized deaf Americans across the decades.” Porochista Khakpour has insisted it’s “mandatory reading for everyone.”
As a longtime reader of Sara’s, it’s been an absolute pleasure getting to dive into yet another richly compelling work.
Jana M. Perkins, PhD
Host, Women of Letters
Sara Nović is the author of the NYT Bestseller True Biz, as well as the books Girl at War and America is Immigrants. She holds an MFA in fiction and literary translation from Columbia University, and is an instructor of Deaf studies and creative writing. She lives in Philadelphia with her family. Her latest book, Mother Tongue, is out 5 May, and available for order now.
How did your childhood shape your ideas about what work looked like and what was possible for you?
Sara Nović: I definitely hail from a family of hustlers and workaholics.
When I was small, my family was working class; my dad learned to program computers at a time when it was basically index cards and whoever wanted to give it a go, and we experienced upward mobility to the middle class alongside that tech boom. But I was also the first person in my family to go to college, so I had a lot of ideas about how important it would be for me to emerge from said college with a capital J “Job”…. then I took a creative writing class.
What’s the first thing you remember being good at?
Sara Nović: Reading. I remember there was this used bookstore in the town where we used to go down the shore that would do paperback trades, and I would take and return stacks and stacks of books—so many that the people working there recognized me year in and year out, even though we were only visitors.
I think a general life rule is that if you can impress a bookseller, you’re probably in a good spot.
Tell us about some of the projects, ideas, or questions you’re currently working on.
Sara Nović: My latest book, Mother Tongue, is out now—it’s a memoir plus critical theory and history about deafness, queerness, adoption, and many of the ways in which we find ourselves different from our parents. I’m excited and scared for it to be in people’s hands!
I am in a fun and tense liminal space where I’m both working on various business tasks to help support that book, and playing around with what might be my next book. I’m not a planner or outliner when I write (though I covet the color-coded notecards of those who are), so I really don’t know where this next thing will go. But for me, that’s most of the fun.
How do you get your work in each day? What does that process look like, and what are the conditions that help you perform at your best?
Sara Nović: Honestly, I don’t get to work every day on my writing in a consistent way. It’s just the reality of my life right now, with two little kids and teaching obligations.
“I realized trying to imitate the writing paths of hearing, often childless dudes was not going to make me better, and that the more important skill would be figuring out what works to get my own butt in the chair.”
I am one of those writers who needs to write, though; I feel physically and spiritually gross if I don’t write something for a few days, so even if it’s just a few sentences, or a freelance piece, or journaling, I have to squeeze it in. When my first son was really small, I would compose and memorize paragraphs in my head in the shower and then run dripping to my notebook to write them down before I forgot! These days I have some time when they’re in school, but it can still be hard to prioritize writing when there are so many other timely work and household needs.
What do you typically like to read, and what are you reading now?
Sara Nović: My high school education was extremely white guy canon heavy, so today I typically read contemporary and literary fiction by women and nonbinary people. It’s not even something I’m totally conscious of all the time—more that I feel like I’m playing catch up and naturally gravitate toward those gaps in my reading.
Recently I’ve been down a thriller rabbit hole, and that’s not my regular domain, but my next project is shaping up with some possible thriller elements, so I’m interested in reverse-engineering good books and seeing how they hang together.
What are you most proud of achieving?
Sara Nović: When True Biz hit the bestseller list, Nyle DiMarco’s memoir Deaf Utopia was on the nonfiction list, too, and I don’t think two deaf-authored books have ever made the Times list like that before, so that was really exciting.
The thing I love most, though, is when people share their personal connections to my books, especially fellow deaf people who see themselves in my work, or parents of deaf kids (or sometimes even just readers unconnected to the community) who start studying ASL after reading True Biz—I love that.
What’s something you’ve had to unlearn from your formal education?
Sara Nović: Being a good student has very little to do with being good at anything else beyond a particular kind of compliance, so, basically all of it!
“In graduate school I got hung up on a lot of the advice from Big Writers—things like, ‘You have to wake up at 4 AM and write before doing anything else.’”
When you think of women who have inspired or influenced you, who comes to mind?
Sara Nović: I’ll probably never stop being in awe of Zadie Smith’s mind—I got her new essay collection for Hanukkah so that’s on my TBR.
Also, the shape of True Biz was directly influenced by the work of Celeste Ng. Something I really loved about her first two novels was that she tells us the end at the beginning, and yet we as readers are still fully invested in the journey because we want to know not what, but why? I wanted to see if I could do that, too, which is why True Biz starts at the end, when the students go missing.
What’s a commonly shared piece of advice that you disagree with, and why?
Sara Nović: In graduate school I got hung up on a lot of the advice from Big Writers—things like, “You have to wake up at 4 AM and write before doing anything else,” or the one that really haunted me: “You have to read your dialogue aloud to make sure it sounds natural.”
Maybe in part because I was such a stereotypical good student, I freaked out about these things for longer than I should have. But eventually I realized trying to imitate the writing paths of hearing, often childless dudes was not going to make me better, and that the more important skill would be figuring out what works to get my own butt in the chair and keep it there.
How do you maintain momentum during slower seasons?
Sara Nović: I’ve got a six- and seven-year-old right now, so I haven’t had a slow season in a while, in terms of being alive. Work-wise, I have always been a slow writer even when I didn’t have kids, so I have learned to trust the process to the degree that it is possible.
Productivity as the measuring stick of worth can be a really hard thing to unlearn; I definitely haven’t fully done that, but I think I’ve gotten more pragmatic and holistic about my approach to what “success” looks like.
Are there any skills or interests that have turned out to be unexpectedly valuable in your career?
Sara Nović: I worked as a Staples copy and print maven when I was in college, and having even this basic knowledge of copy and print machinery and design production has been surprisingly useful as a writer and a teacher.
“I am one of those writers who needs to write; I feel physically and spiritually gross if I don’t write something for a few days, so even if it’s just a few sentences I have to squeeze it in.”
What book have you most often gifted to others?
Sara Nović: This changes often, but this past holiday season I bought so many copies of Mia McKenzie’s These Heathens.
Where do you feel the most scarcity in your life? Where do you feel the most abundance?
Sara Nović: Time is so scarce, and so many people and things need time.
In this book about the intersection of motherhood and creativity, The Baby on the Fire Escape, the author quotes Margaret Mead saying, “‘[It’s] not because the baby cries, but because the baby smiles so much’ that the hours get lost.” That certainly rings true in my life. The good thing is the laughter is the abundance.
If you were starting now, what would you do differently?
Sara Nović: I know a lot more about the business side of things now, but truthfully, I’m not sure that’s always helpful. I didn’t start writing because I thought I would make money—I did it for the way it made me feel and the way I wanted to make others feel. I still do. But sometimes the notion of an audience can actually be a paralyzing thing to think about, especially in the early stages of a project, so I’m grateful I had no clue what I was doing when I started.
Where can our readers find you?
Sara Nović: Yelling on the internet! @novicsara.bsky.social on Bluesky, @photonovic on Instagram (and occasionally Threads), and buttondown.com/signs+wonders, for a monthly newsletter. Also my website: sara-novic.com.
I am so excited to be able to gift two copies of Sara’s latest amazing book, Mother Tongue. 📚
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I would love to read Mother Tongue. I read True Biz, and it inspired me to learn more ASL, which I practice with my daughter. We are both hearing, but I love learning the language because it gives me a new sense of how meaning is made.