Sara Benincasa
I began writing as a child because I loved books and I wanted to imitate what I saw there. My mother was the first in her Italian-American family to go to college. The daughter of a single mother, she had long dreamed of being a schoolteacher. When I was born, she had recently received her bachelor’s degree in early childhood development. She worked different jobs while my father went to night school to get his MBA. Once my younger brother and I were of school age, my mother went to night school to get her Master of Library Sciences. Armed with this degree, she became a public schoolteacher in elementary and junior high schools in New Jersey. We always had books in our house and I was permitted to read nearly anything I wanted. I loved the way that a book could take me into an entirely new world. What an extraordinary thing, to be immersed in someone else’s imagination for a time! My goal was always to be an author, and I studied to become a high school teacher. Then I became a stand-up comedian and a freelance writer instead. Eventually, I added author to my resume, and now I’ve published five books. But I still return to that sense of wonder I felt sitting on my mother’s lap, trying to make sense of the words on the page.