Rising Stars: Meet Sarah Spurlock

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sarah Spurlock.

Hi Sarah, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
When I was a kid in the 90s, we had printer paper that came in rolls. To seven-year-old me, these weren’t just rolls of carbon paper with perforated edges on both sides – they were massive longitudinal blank canvases for my stories. On these endless spools, I created elaborate storyboards and settings with characters that borrowed heavily from my own experiences.

Then, when I was ten, I entered a national writing contest sponsored by McDonald’s called the NBA All-Star Small Fry Reporter contest. Contestants wrote essays about their favorite all-star players, and I wrote about Mitch Richmond, a legendary Sacramento Kings player. To my surprise, I won, and McDonalds flew me to New York City to “report” on the NBA All-Star game in 1997 at Madison Square Garden. I had the chance to interview Mitch himself, along with other NBA stars such as Grant Hill, and the Sacramento Bee published my report. Two years later the teacher in charge of the school newspaper made me Editor-in-Chief without even requiring me to apply, and my fate as a writer was sealed.

I continued to plow through English and Literature classes in high school, taking as many AP classes as I could. In college, I found myself powered up in my Poli Sci classes, so I graduated with a Bachelor’s in Political Science from UC Davis in June 2009 right in the middle of the recession. Because I couldn’t find a job, I went back to graduate school a year later for history, my other passion (which is basically just nonfiction storytelling.)

I worked in museums after graduate school – first for a stint at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento and then at the Molly Brown House Museum, a small women’s history museum in Denver. When I moved to LA, I began copywriting for real estate companies – which wasn’t exactly my true calling, but it paid the bills until I could determine the writing niche I wanted to pursue. That led me here, to pop politics/feminist writing.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
There were times when it felt too smooth to be true, but I realize now that they were smooth because there was a huge tradeoff I was making for the smoothness. Those were the periods of my life when I sacrificed writing what I wanted to write for the writing that made me money, which are two completely different things. It’s rare for those two things to be the same. But when I look back, I remember the struggles and bumps in the road much more clearly than the smooth parts, because the struggles are what made me grow and gain confidence in myself.

Another big struggle for a writer is burnout. You feel like you always have to work, always find a way to mine your life for content or inspiration. That’s partly because of hustle culture, and partly because the people who take the leap to earn a living via their art are highly motivated individuals anyway. Every time I think I have already learned my threshold for burnout, I learn the hard way that it can’t be predicted – it’s a moving target. The economy is always changing and the need for my writing shifts from practical to artistic and back again. It’s hard to guess what could burn me out and what I think I might have the capacity for. And most days, it takes a lot of discipline to be able to step back from the computer – it’s almost as if the worker in me is my default state, and I have to force myself to relax.

One thing I’m working on is saying yes to fewer things, making sure the yesses are for higher-quality projects, and working at a natural pace.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Although I do all kinds of writing these days, I call myself a pop politics/feminist writer first. Since 2016, politics has taken a front-and-center position more than it ever did before, and people who didn’t pay close attention to politics have become much more involved. Over the years, I started to notice that the kind of political information these folks seek isn’t what mainstream news outlets deliver – for example, they don’t care about detailed political processes the talking heads discuss on primetime cable news. What the average person wants is an explanation of the political themes in current events. They also want easy-to-grasp cultural context to these themes, and how it all applies to their lives. I coined the term “pop politics” to cover the writing these people seek, and it’s what I try to do in my feminist newsletter Reclaiming. I take pop politics and give it a hearty feminist lens.

I think what sets me apart, though, is that I put a very witchy, spiritual twist on my writing. I’ve always been fascinated by the history of witches in the US. Early in my feminism, I read a book by Gloria Steinem called The Revolution From Within. Steinem’s work convinced me that in order to change the world, I first have to change myself and the energy around me. This, to me, felt very witchy. I began studying witchcraft itself, seeking teachers and mentors, and reading everything I could about magic. Today, most of my feminist writing includes a heavy witchcraft component. I haven’t seen anything quite like it out there. And it must resonate, because earlier this year a great new indie press hired me to write two childrens’ books about witchcraft, which will come out later this year.

How do you think about happiness?
Right now, as I write this at my desk, I realize most of what makes me happy is right here – my dog and my cat, my husband, our record collection, my books, even my pole (I’m a pole dancer!). I live in a fun city (Los Angeles), I have an amazing circle of friends, and I am never bored. Outside of our small little haven, though, I’d have to say live music (particularly reggae and punk) and traveling take me to a completely different spiritual place. But those are just bonuses. 🙂

Contact Info:

• Website: sarahspurlock.com
• Instagram: @sarahhhhchristine

Image Credits
Jonathan Adjahoe