The Internal Contradictions of Avigayl Sharp

A wave of doubt rolls through fiction writer Avigayl Sharp moments before she meets the page. “Writing is scary for me because I go in with absolutely nothing,” she says. “I start working on a story — I’m working on a novel right now — and I go in just with nothing. I have no idea how something is going to come out of nothing!”

Fine Arts Work Center fiction fellow Avigayl Sharp. “I don’t have a plot,” she says. “It’s totally dark, and then slowly I can see one step ahead.” (Photo by Pat Kearns)

Sharp’s fiction is absurd yet entirely believable. Her narrators seem to be in line to the bathroom without actually having to go. The stakes are high — even on a seemingly normal day.