Meet The Persistent Fool
Sarah Coffer
MA in TESOL, BA in Lingustics and Anthrology
Who me?
I'm a dirty commie anarchist. An interdimensional witch who finds human existence very, very uncomfortable. I'm a recovering addict and schizophrenic cosplaying a responsible adult in this shamelessly hypocritical uncivilization. I’m a pansexual demifemale. A single mom. An activist, a linguist, and a language teacher. I'm poor, but I do meaningful work and I do it well. So I'm rich in conscience, one might say, as well as in community.
My first publication, a personal essay called “Afraid of Monsters,” was featured in the Spring 2025 issue of the Santa Clara Review.
I’m currently workshopping my first memoir manuscript called What To Do About Crazy.
“If the fool would persist in [her] folly, [She] would become wISE.” -Wm. Blake
The fool has the pathological optimism of an amnesiac but the grit of a hardened soldier. She skips gayly, staggers blindly, and sometimes claws her way with spiteful determination down this path that most disdainfully refer to as “the hard way.” Nonetheless, she persists in her folly and tells her tales and hopes that perhaps you, dear reader, can find a bit of solace and wisdom in it.
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Am I just a poor girl afflicted with childhood trauma and, later, mental illness and addiction issues? Am I a magical woman spiritually descended from a long line of prophets, born with psychic abilities, incarnated to reveal the true nature of reality hidden just below that which we perceive? Or am I merely a starving artist, madly scrawling these self-serving fictions, desperately grasping for deeper meaning and greater relevance in an otherwise terrifyingly small existence?
Then again, why can’t I be all three? For decades I have let these facets of myself war with one another, embodying one for a time and demonizing the others, rotating them out in dizzying cycles. But, as the voices said in the very beginning, how predictably human to require that they be mutually exclusive, only one facet ultimately true and the others fraud. What you witness before you in these pages is an inevitable surrender, to finally allow all selves to co-exist, to react and integrate, to alchemize into the divine lightning rod I always intended to be. But don’t worry, I won’t argue with you if you simply call me ‘crazy.’