Soft A Memoir

Soft, Sherrie Fernandez-William’s first book, is a relentlessly textured memoir exposing the author’s life as she goes back and forth in time, examining who she is today, and why. Soft is a story for those who understand moving from one geographical, spiritual, or identity-oriented place to another, hoping to escape, only to discover there are always other places that need escaping. It is a story for those searching their own lives to understand the capacity we may have to move forward, even as we may be forced to move back, with strength, and dignity and compassion, and despite our fears.

Sherrie Fernandez-Williams holds an MFA in Writing from Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and is the recipient of an Artist Initiative Award through the Minnesota State Arts Board as well as a SASE/Jerome Grant through Intermedia Arts of Minneapolis. She was a Loft Mentor Series winner for Creative Nonfiction, selected for a Givens Black Writers Collaborative Retreat, and received a Jones Commission Award for new playwrights through the Playwrights' Center of Minneapolis. Excerpts of her memoir have been published in several literary journals and anthologies. Fernandez-Williams discovered her need for words in Brooklyn, New York, where she was born and raised, but she ''grew up'' as a writer in Twin Cities. She resides and teaches in Saint Paul, Minnesota.