The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #89: Sarah Kendzior

"For a decade, my readers have asked, 'How do you raise children, knowing what you know?' more than any other question. This book is my answer."

Since 2010, in various publications, I’ve interviewed authors—mostly memoirists—about aspects of writing and publishing. Initially I did this for my own edification, as someone who was struggling to find the courage and support to write and publish my memoir. I’m still curious about other authors’ experiences, and I know many of you are, too. So, inspired by the popularity of The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire, I’ve launched The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire.

Here’s the 89th installment, featuring

Sarah Kendzior

, author most recently of The Last American Road Trip:A Memoir. -Sari Botton

P.S. Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.

---

Sarah Kendzior

Sarah Kendzior is the author of The Last American Road Trip, They Knew, Hiding in Plain Sight, and The View from Flyover Country. She has a newsletter you can read for free: Sarah Kendzior’s Newsletter. She has a PhD in anthropology from Washington University, where she studied authoritarian regimes. She lives in St. Louis with her husband and children.

—

How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?

I’m 46. I’ve been writing since I was four. I’ve been writing professionally since I was 10 and won a contest to review TV shows for the children’s version of Consumer Reports. They paid me in exposure, which prepared me for the 21^st century media economy.

What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?

My latest book, The Last American Road Trip: A Memoir, will be published April 1, 2025.

What number book is this for you?

This is my fourth book.

How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?

It’s a mix of memoir, travelogue, and history.

What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?

National Lampoon’s Vacation meets Mad Max. Kidding, kidding. Sort of. In 2016, I decided to take my children to see as much of the United States as I could, in the event of its collapse. That was a wise move. We live in Missouri, which fell on hard times early, so we had a head start. Missouri is also a great departure point: when you leave from the center, you can watch the country unravel in every direction.

My family drove to 40 states during eight of the most tumultuous years in US history. We visited iconic places like national parks but also sites of state crimes and obscure Americana. We did it as climate change, Covid, and corruption changed the physical and political landscape. I want my children to know America, and hopefully to love America—but love it for what it is, not for what it pretends to be. For a decade, my readers have asked, “How do you raise children, knowing what you know?” more than any other question. This book is my answer.

The Last American Road Trip will resonate with anyone struggling with conflicting feelings of grief and love and anger over America.

My family drove to 40 states during eight of the most tumultuous years in US history. We visited iconic places like national parks but also sites of state crimes and obscure Americana. We did it as climate change, Covid, and corruption changed the physical and political landscape. I want my children to know America, and hopefully to love America—but love it for what it is, not for what it pretends to be.

What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?

I’ve had a varied career due to a continually crashing economy so I’ve written in many genres: essays, investigative reporting, political analysis, academic journal articles, memoirs, travelogues, etc. But I’m best known for writing dark and lyrical books about American political life.

The last chapter of my 2020 book Hiding in Plain Sight described some of our early road trips and explained my desire to show my kids as much of the US as I could before climate and political catastrophes destroyed it. So many people responded passionately to that chapter that I decided to expand it into a book: about parenting in a terrifying time, about the sin and splendor of America, about finding places to sustain yourself as your country collapses. We found beauty in the wreckage.

Order the book…

What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?

Nonstop economic and political disasters. This is my second book in which “Is there still paper?” is a legit question prior to the release. (The first was Hiding in Plain Sight, published two weeks into the 2020 pandemic shutdown.) Also, in 2023, many people close to me died or received terminal diagnoses. That sorrow seeps into the book. I had anticipatory grief for my father, who has stage four cancer, and my homeland at the same time. I don’t think that’s a unique feeling these days. I hope The Last American Road Trip helps folks contending with similar situations feel less alone.

How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?

I left my family members’ names out to protect their privacy to the degree I could. My immediate family read it. It was helpful to have my husband read drafts, because he was a firsthand witness to our adventures. Sometimes he remembered something interesting or funny that happened and I’d add it in.

The last chapter of my 2020 book Hiding in Plain Sight described some of our early road trips and explained my desire to show my kids as much of the US as I could before climate and political catastrophes destroyed it. So many people responded passionately to that chapter that I decided to expand it into a book: about parenting in a terrifying time, about the sin and splendor of America, about finding places to sustain yourself as your country collapses. We found beauty in the wreckage.

Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)

Ray Bradbury was a big inspiration. In 2021, while I was writing They Knew – a very dark book about political crime, including the Jeffrey Epstein case – I was reading Dandelion Wine for fun. Researching They Knew was grueling, and I thought: “I need to cleanse my soul, I need to write a book like Dandelion Wine, overflowing with love and memory and a sense of place.”

But Dandelion Wine is also the flip side to Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes—a horror novel set in the same town. I decided I would do the same but with non-fiction. If my first three books are Something Wicked This Way Comes, then The Last American Road Trip is Dandelion Wine. It’s a story of the same place—America—told in a very different way. It’s a sentimental book, a bittersweet book, and an honest book.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?

Don’t ask for permission. Write what you want and tell the truth even if it pisses off the powerful. My first book, The View from Flyover Country, is a collection of essays written in 2012-2014 that forecast the catastrophic events that came to pass over the last decade. It was never meant to be a book. It was a series of essays I wrote for Al Jazeera, where I was a columnist, that I self-published as an ebook in 2015 due to reader requests. I self-published because everyone with whom I spoke in NYC publishing could not understand why I had such a pessimistic view of the American future. I figured I shouldn’t bother pitching it. By 2016, they were no longer questioning my perspective.

I got many offers to publish Flyover in print once the ebook went viral, but I was reluctant to give up the copyright. I drove my agent crazy turning down offers for a year. In fall 2017, I sold it to Flatiron, and Flyover became a print bestseller. My next book, Hiding in Plain Sight, was also a bestseller, and then I got another deal, and here we are.

This is a very unorthodox route to publishing success. It’s also a tragic one, because I did not want my terrible predictions to come true. But I have a career because I refused to compromise. If I had bowed to corporate pressure, I would have written lackluster work and probably failed professionally. Nothing is safe these days, so why play it safe? Stay true.

What do you love about writing? 

I’m the classic “I hate writing but I love having written” type. It’s either an ecstatic process or torture, but I’m usually pleased with the result. I love playing with words and it’s always interesting to find out what my subconscious is thinking, since it’s in charge of the books.

What frustrates you about writing?

Inspiration on a schedule. I never know what I really want to say until I start writing and it reveals itself. I’ll have loose ideas beforehand; I don’t start from nothing. But a piece needs to be drafted in full before I know if it works. Sometimes it doesn’t and I throw the whole thing away and try to convince myself it wasn’t wasted time. It wasn’t—it was laying the groundwork for what I do want to say—but it sure feels like it in the moment!

This wouldn’t feel so bad if writing weren’t my livelihood and I didn’t have deadlines and commitments – what to leave in, what to leave out. I also get frustrated when I think I’m saying something original and then realize I’m just quoting lines from a Bob Seger song. Running against the wind, man—that’s what frustrates me!

What about writing surprises you?

I can spend a long time writing without moving or talking or even eating—often eight hours or more, like I’m in a trance. Then the trance ends and an article is there, as if someone else wrote it and I channeled it. It’s a relief but also frightening how much the generative part of the process is beyond my control. I wish my subconscious didn’t have as big a role in determining the output, but then the writing would probably not be as compelling.

Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine or writing at specific times? 

I have a Pavlovian playlist to make me write when I don’t feel like it. This developed accidentally when I was working on Hiding in Plain Sight and listening to songs that captured the vibe I wanted. That grew into a playlist that I began to need every time I wrote, or my mind wouldn’t go in the zone. I have a different playlist for every book, each of which reflects its nature. The bad thing about this tactic is that it destroys a lot of great songs! I’m so sick of them by the time the book is done, it takes a while to love them again.

People like me in regimes like this don’t last long. I wrote two bestselling books about transnational organized crime infiltrating government. I don’t have illusions and I don’t have regrets. But I do have sadness. I write stories for a living and I know how stories like mine tend to end. Hopefully I’m wrong, but I’d advise you to get my books while you can. And know I wrote them out of love, even the scary ones.

Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities do you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?

Oh yeah! I have a ton of hobbies. I do a lot of crafts: embroidery, basket making, weaving. I just got a treadle loom. When the weather is good, I spent a lot of time outdoors. I love canoeing and kayaking, especially in the Ozarks, and hiking, though my knees protest. I love driving the back roads of Missouri blaring music. I’m always listening to music unless I’m in nature, and then I listen to birds. In the spring, I go morel hunting.

Our whole family loves astronomy and we plan trips around the moon cycles and the Milky Way. I love geology—I have a huge rock and mineral collection that I gathered from abandoned mines. I spend a lot of time exploring caves and ruins and historic sites. I wander around St. Louis cemeteries and look up the people with the most interesting graves. I also love watching TV each night with my husband and kids. We’re watching Twin Peaks now. My kids keep saying I’m Dale Cooper because he’s either investigating horrific crimes or rhapsodizing about trees and pie.

What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?

People like me in regimes like this don’t last long. I wrote two bestselling books about transnational organized crime infiltrating government. I don’t have illusions and I don’t have regrets. But I do have sadness. I write stories for a living and I know how stories like mine tend to end. Hopefully I’m wrong, but I’d advise you to get my books while you can. And know I wrote them out of love, even the scary ones.

---

Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.