Sara Brenes Akerman

• BA in Communication and in Cinema Studies, University of Pennsylvania
• MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction), New York University
• MA in English and American Literature, Washington University in St. Louis

Ms. Brenes Akerman began tutoring at The Writing Center in Spring 2023. She has teaching experience in College Writing and English, and her interests range from Shakespeare in performance to representations of midcentury New York. Her writing has appeared in The Common Reader, The Brooklyn Review, Washington Magazine, and The Chicago Review (forthcoming).

What brought you to The Writing Center?

I first experienced The Writing Center as a graduate student participating in dissertation writing retreats. I was struck by the way in which The Writing Center demystified writing, often an anxiety-ridden process, and made writing feel approachable. Dissertation writing can often be isolating, and so I also greatly appreciated the sense of community that participating in those retreats gave me. When the opportunity arose to join The Writing Center as a senior tutor, I knew I wanted to help other writers in the very ways in which I had been helped.

What do you like most about working with writers at The Writing Center?

Learning about a broad range of disciplines and becoming privy to the many different paths students are on. There is so much excellent and compelling work being done on campus and I feel privileged to be able to read so much of it.

What do you find most challenging about writing?

How much patience it requires and how gradual your own development as a writer feels. It’s only when I look back five or ten years that I realize how much I’ve evolved as a writer yet very rarely do I feel like I’m getting better in the moment. Every time I start something new, it feels just as challenging as it ever did. Writing rewards unexciting things like persistence, daily toil, and withstanding your own shortcomings long enough to try to overcome them. I don’t always want to sit with the discomfort that writing generates. Pushing through and deciding to write anyway is both the biggest challenge and the most rewarding thing a writer can do.  

What advice do you have for writers?

Be kind to yourself and, as much as your schedule allows, give yourself enough time to become a good reader of your own writing. Often, this is just a matter of time. If you can put a draft away for a day or a week, you can become a slightly different person from the one who wrote it and see it again with the eyes of a smart, impassive reader, able to pick up things the writer missed.