Headlands Center for the Arts

Erica Lorraine Scheidt

california | writing
Affiliate Program 2012—2013

Artist Statement

I write for young people. I believe the years between 13 and 17 are everything. That adolescence is a great narrative of longing and urgency. I’m interested in how language is slippery like adolescence, how it contains our contradictions and our shifting sense of self. My work concerns the interior lives of girls, those fragile narratives: the cleaving of best friends; the flights of bravado and uncertainty; the risk of trying, anything, of trying and trying anything.

While at Headlands

While at Headlands I’m writing a novel about the strength of girls and the cost of that strength. I have two novels-in-progress right now and I’ll say that writing a novel is like falling down a hole. Writing the first taught me nothing about writing the next. Each misstep, each false start, each moment of grace, unique.

Selected Texts

Excerpt from Uses for Boys (52.00K)

Something More (56.93K)

The Striped Blue Afghan (28.89K)

Personal Website

http://www.ericalorraine.com/, http://www.usesforboys.com/