A switch from sculpture proves author Sara Baume’s got the write stuff

Sara Baume has never found writing easy, but a slew of awards have been apt reward for her toil, writes Colette Sheridan.

WHEN Sara Baume sits down at her desk to write, she sometimes has an existential crisis. “There’s this crushing sense of ‘Oh my god, this is so hard. I should be doing something else’,” says the 30-year old author. Born in England and reared in Lisgoold, Co Cork, she recently won the Hennessy New Irish Writer Award 2015, and last year won the prestigious Davy Byrne Short Story Award worth €15,000.

Her debut novel, Spill Simmer Falter Wither was recently published by Tramp Press. Baume, who lives in Whitegate, Co Cork, has a two-book deal and is currently working on her second novel. So why the angst?

“I don’t want to sound ungrateful. So many people want to do what I’m doing,” says Baume. She started out wanting to be an artist and studied fine art at Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology, graduating in 2007.

“I was making sculpture at college where you have workshop space, a technician and access to a wood-work room. Then, suddenly, you’ve graduated and out in the world with nothing. I ended up working in art galleries. I did stints at the Glucksman Gallery and did an internship at the Douglas Hyde Gallery at Trinity.”

During this time, Baume wrote art criticism for a couple of journals that eventually went out of print. “The recession hit me. While I had been doing art reviews, what I loved reading was fiction. I thought writing fiction would be fun. It has never been fun but I had a go at it and obviously, I was ok at it. Then I decided to put in a portfolio for the M Phil in creative writing at Trinity.”

Baume doesn’t necessarily think that aspiring writers require a qualification in creative writing. “But for me, it was a great reason to write and do nothing else.” However, she says that writing and visual art continue to tug at each other. “But from a purely practical point of view, I have my laptop, I write a book and I send it to publishers. It’s very straight forward compared to making big sculptures. I had no idea that things would work out the way they did. With writing, you’re totally tuning into the dark. It was five years from finishing the masters to actually having the book published. It was a really big quiet period of my life. I didn’t actually start the book until two years ago.”

In the meantime, Baume submitted short stories to journals. “I got my start with The Stinging Fly which has published Kevin Barry, Mary Costello and Colin Barrett. That gave me confidence although for a long time, I was too nervous to start anything longer.”

Baume’s novel is the story of a 57-year-old man who adopts a dog. “He’s a strange man. We all know these guys. They’re the kind of odd people you like to think are harmless but you would still cross the road to avoid them. I love that the book is doing well. People really seem to care about the character. He’s taken from my own loneliness and ‘driftingness’.

“I tried writing the character as an older woman and as a younger woman. But the only way it worked was as an older man. He’s sort of innocent and perceives things with a kind of wonderment.”

Baume’s second novel is more autobiographical than Spill Summer Falter Wither. “It’s about someone who has just finished art school and the struggles of that.”

To an outsider, Baume’s own struggle would seem to be over. But she anxiously confers with her mother (a big influence), a few select friends and her editors about her writing. Baume may be winning the glittering prizes but she takes nothing for granted.

• Sara Baume will be reading and taking part in a Q&A session at Jim Cashman’s pub in Cork tomorrow as part of a monthly storytelling event organised by the Lightning Bug. facebook.com/lightningbugpress

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