University of Denver Fall 2022

Essay explores the aftermath of sexual assault In a provocative book length essay, “ Rancher ” (Burrow Press, 2021), Selah Saterstrom, a professor in DU’s creative writing PhD program, mulls the “uncanny territories of life after rape”—territories depicted in Saterstrom’s seamless prose and in original color illustrations by H.C. Dunaway Smith. A survivor of a sexual assault, Saterstrom had dispatched her assailant to the farthest recesses of her memory. But one day, scrolling through her Facebook feed, a photo of him standing before his ranch-style house jumped out at her. The house came complete with a swimming pool, a status symbol— “something I have wanted for myself my entire life”— that raised her ire. With that online encoun ter and the fury it triggered, Saterstrom began writing intensely about the act and

reality of rape and, just as important, about the process of healing and reflecting, of “being with” the trauma. In thinking about her own experience, she introduces readers to 11-year-old Maria Teresa Goretti, the patron saint of rape victims, who died in 1902 from stab wounds inflicted as she resisted a sexual assault. Within the Catholic Church, she has been a problematic saint, beatified in large part because she forgave her attacker. “You might say that she is the patron saint of the #MeToo movement,” Saterstrom writes. From Goretti’s story, Saterstrom turns to actor Julie Andrews, who played another virginal and problematic Maria, surnamed Von Trapp, in “The Sound of Music.” In that film, she stars as a nun who can’t conform to her order’s vision and so becomes the subject of an aptly named song, “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” Behind Andrews’ performance, Saterstrom notes, lurks a galling truth: According to Andrews’ memoir, starting at age 9, she was forced to share a bed with her stepfather. She finds stories like these everywhere—and every where as well, women navigating the uncanny aftermath of sexual assault.

search for some kind of faith in a shaken world where my only ‘knowns’ were a cabin porch, a spill of morning sun, and a nuthatch at the feeder,” she wrote on her blog. The collection was a semi-finalist for the Finishing Line Press’ 2020 Open Chapbook Contest, but it represents only the most recent of Winograd’s literary accomplishments. She is the author of seven books, including “Air Into Breath” (Ashland Poetry Press, 2002), winner of the 2003 Colorado Book Award for poetry. Winograd is also author of several books on teaching poetry in the classroom. Her time with students and her encounters with the blank page have made her an ardent champion of the random prompt. In a January 2022 article for Split Rock Review, she shared her secret for juicing creativity: “If stuck, I am never too faint-hearted to pull out a magazine or a book from a shelf, riffle through its pages, and then blindly stab a finger at any word, phrase, or sentence—the more prosaic, the better. Writing my poem, ‘Migrations,’ surprise winner of one of the Writer’s Digest writing competitions, I opened up the morning newspaper and, in utter frustration, stuck my finger on the phrase, ‘There is no justification here,’ which led me to my ending for a poem I thought impossible to finish.”

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