2016

The American Antiquarian Society is an incredible resource for historical research for novelists. Because I wanted to experience the books as physical objects, just as my seventeenth century characters might have experienced them, I got to sit with Elizabeth Pope, Curator of Books, while she held a light beneath a page and explained how the process of papermaking left a grid of marks from wires and chains.

Travelogos: African Americans and the Struggle for Safe Passage

My residency at the American Antiquarian Society as the William Randolph Hearst Fellow in October and November of 2016 was an invaluable, inspiring and career shifting experience. There are a number of things, people and experiences that coalesced to make the time I spent at the AAS and on its campus that made the experience as remarkable as it was.

In the video above, Sasanov discusses her residency at AAS and reads her poem “Snow Globe (April, 18, 1775) Revere Speaks.” Written from the perspective of Paul Revere, trapped forever on his Midnight Ride, the poem meditates in part on an incident with an enslaved child mentioned in the American Antiquarian Society’s Hugh Hall Papers, 1718-1743.