Sarah Bruni: On Localized Violence Through a Global Lens
In this interview, author Sarah Bruni discusses the question at the heart of her new novel, Mass Mothering.
Sarah Bruni is a graduate of the MFA program at Washington University in St. Louis and holds a master’s in Latin American studies from Tulane University. She has taught English and writing classes in New York and St. Louis, and she has volunteered as a writer-in-schools in San Francisco and Montevideo, Uruguay. She is also the author of the novel The Night Gwen Stacy Died. Her fiction has appeared in Boston Review, and her translations have appeared in the Buenos Aires Review. She lives in Chicago with her family.
In this interview, Sarah discusses the question at the heart of her new novel, Mass Mothering, her advice for other writers, and more.
Name: Sarah Bruni
Literary agent: Chris Clemans at Janklow & Nesbit
Book title: Mass Mothering
Publisher: Henry Holt
Release date: February 3, 2026
Genre/category: Literary fiction
Previous titles: The Night Gwen Stacy Died
Elevator pitch: An amateur translator recovering from a medical trauma encounters an unfinished book about a community of mothers whose sons were disappeared by political violence. She reads the book obsessively, until she finally makes her way to the place where it was written, to find that the book and its author are not what they seem.
What prompted you to write this book?
Above all else, reading outside the canon of literature I had grown up with in the U.S. and thinking about localized violence through a global lens. One guiding question I kept coming back to was: How do you live your life and process your own pain and joy cognizant of widescale pain and joy elsewhere? I wanted to try to write two different and unnamed worlds, and to place into juxtaposition the private pain of a single character with a kind of collective pain in a faraway place, and to move back and forth between those two worlds and two modes of grief and life.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
The short answer is about a decade. But it wasn’t written in a linear way at all, so it’s hard to put a timestamp on the process. The idea didn’t necessarily change, but for a while I didn’t know whether the two narrative voices I was writing could occupy the same novel. When I decided that there wasn’t a way for me to write this particular story without them coexisting, the larger mechanisms of the book sort of began to snap into place for me.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
This novel took me a very long time to share with anyone beyond a few trusted readers, but by the time I found an agent and, eventually, a publisher for it, I had a very firm idea of what the book was and what it was not. Unlike with my first novel, in which the process of publishing required a lot of revision and reimagining as I absorbed ideas from each new reader along the way, this time both my agent’s and editors’ readings of the book mirrored my own from the start. In different ways, they each helped me carve out the story to more resemble the one I wanted to tell. I was grateful, especially after hoarding the book for such a long time, to feel so incredibly supported and to have the publishing process be so seamless.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
The book centers on the mutual care of a group of mothers during a community tragedy, but I wrote it before I was a mother myself. I created the unattached, transient character of A. in part because she occupied a world that felt somewhat closer to my own experience. In later stages of editing, even as I was heartened by the collective action of the mothers of this book, it became increasingly difficult for me to enter into the space of imagination for the horrors that they witness.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
I hate to be too prescriptive, as my hope is for readers to be able to encounter the book without my own version of its meanings in mind. I will say that I thought a lot about the ethics and consequences of bearing witness, especially in a globalized world where the reverberations of violence extend far beyond the site where it’s inflicted. As someone reading and writing in the U.S., with its sordid legacy of intervention in mind, I hoped readers might identify with my narrator’s process of becoming consumed by a story very far away from her own experience, even while, inevitably, there are things she can’t help but misunderstand.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Read books in translation. Read outside of the tradition, country, language, and historical moment that you’re writing in. There are so many types of storytelling that aren’t represented in mainstream U.S. publishing today. Encountering them elsewhere can feel tremendously liberating as a writer, opening up the narrative possibilities one can imagine.
