Introducing Sheri Shuster, Hedgebrook’s new Director of Strategic Partnerships
Welcome Sheri!
Hedgebrook’s Executive Director, Kimberly A.C. Wilson sat down last week with Sheri Shuster, Hedgebrook’s new Director of Strategic Partnership, for a chat about reading, storytelling and this particular moment in time. Enjoy a bit of their conversation below.
KW
Tell me a little about your family.
SS
My dad is of Russian and Lithuanian Jewish descent from Los Angeles, my mom is an Iranian Jew from Tehran. They met when they both moved to Israel to study Hebrew for six months. Instead, they got married, had four kids and made Jerusalem their home. I was born there, and then we moved back to LA, where I grew up in a large Iranian Jewish community.
My mom was a translator of literature, from Farsi to French, and speaks seven languages. I started college courses at 13, while attending high school, and went to college full time at 15. I went to UCLA for undergrad and completed graduate school at the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington.
KW
I always ask about the book that made you? What was it for you?
SS
The Brothers Karamazov. I was obsessed, obsessed with Dostoevsky!
KW
Go on.
SS
I think that part of the reason why I was always obsessed with Dostoevsky is because he was the first existential psychologist. And reading him, especially The Brothers Karamazov, and reading Viktor Frankl, really helped me to understand that we are meaning-making animals constantly trying to make sense of our world.
KW
I’m going to come back to that. But first, when we have spoken about what you read for joy, you say neuroscience. Um, so you're… are you reading, like, articles, essays?
SS
Lectures, articles, and currently the book, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, by Iain McGilchrist. It’s about 1,500 pages of the most prominent neuroscience research in the last 50 years. My partner got it for me for my birthday, he's like, “here, I know you will be very happy.” I was like, “you really know me.” To me, that was romantic, because, yeah, he knows what I'm gonna be excited about.
KW
Why neuroscience?
SS
I think that if we better understand on a physiological level about what makes us tick, that we will be better able to care for each other.
KW
So I'm curious, how does that show up in what you bring into a nonprofit like this one. How does that connect? I mean, yesterday, you got to meet Nancy Nordhoff, one of Hedgebrook’s founders. Nancy believes it’s so important that we understand the joy of philanthropy, because she really believes that that's often a missing piece of the equation. Are you using it to sort of better understand what motivates someone who might be interested in giving? How do you see that kind of informing your work?
SS
Well, going back to Dostoevsky, if we are meaning making animals, then stories are the shorthand. The how. That leads me to the why: why is it meaningful to support the work of this unique women’s residency? What is it about your family life, your childhood, your upbringing, your interests, your insecurities, your love, your fear, your joy, your children, that make this matter? I’m looking for our shared sense of purpose and meaning.
People who are overly focused just on the money piece, I think, to be honest, I feel like they're losing the plot, basically. The bigger plot is “How are we going to have a shared sense of purpose and mission based on shared values and understanding of humanity? So that we can, together, make sure that this place exists. For our generation and the next.
KW
When you think of a place for women, why is that important?
SS
(Sighs, luxuriously.)
KW
Was that a deep, whole-bodied sigh? From the ancestors? That felt like that was going back in time. Why is a women-only space something?
SS
Because the culture of a place is important. And when a place is not just all women, but all creative women, I feel like that can have an influence on each individual creative. Creativity is like love. It has a compounding effect.
KW
Girl. Yes.
I know you've spoken of a couple of women writers that influence you. Tell me about two.
SS
Kimberly Crenshaw. And bell hooks.
Fundamentally, reading their works gave me a better understanding of my own humanity.
I discovered bell hooks when I was 19. Something so deep and meaningful and loving comes from her words. Reading bell hooks made me feel more human.
KW
And isn’t that the purpose of reading?
SS
Oh, yes. Completely.
KW
Tell me about your own creativity. You’re a documentary filmmaker.
SS
When I was young, I thought the most badass people were documentary filmmakers.
Growing up in LA, I thought the people in the film industry, to me, were tacky, gauche, superficial, anti-intellectual.
When I worked at Covenant House, I developed relationships with youth being fed to the wolves on the streets. I experienced some of the same risk factors as a youth. I thought, if there’s ever a time in my life when I can do more, it’s now. I had a reason bigger than myself to pick up a camera and teach myself to make a goddam film. And I did. I made a feature film about child sex trafficking, Still I Rise. I made a film about Black women, I made a film about the legacy of slavery. During that whole process, it was a lot of learning. It was a lot of self-interrogating about my own identity and privilege and access and power and positional authority, and why me? Why should I make this film? You know, I haven't experienced sex trafficking, but because I felt like there was not a film that I had seen to date that was made about the subject, that was made through loving eyes.
And I felt like the best way to humanize the survivors was to let them tell their own stories, and to make sure that the film was multidimensional, ethical, and a loving representation of their stories.
KW
What are you most excited about now that you are a part of the story of Hedgebrook?
SS
The team. It's the team! It's the team! I mean, I feel like we all do our best work when we feel supported and seen and nurtured and cared for, and before I even got hired, I thought that.
When you have a supportive team, and you have a competent team, and you have a team that really understands interdependence, and the interdependence of their roles, you can build on that power. I feel like everybody here is really all in. People here really nurture and care for it as if it's their own, because it is. Yeah.
The capacity of one writer to change, to shift the culture, to shift the conversation, to create a new framework, a new metaphor, a new way of understanding. That's real power. That's real power. And I get to be a part of what helps build the power of women's voices and stories.
KW
And why is that important in this moment? Why Hedgebrook, why now?
SS
Because I think we are at a critical time in history, when we need to be redefining narratives. We really have to hold tight to one another. There are so many reasons to bury our heads, we need to make sure we are holding others close.
There is a gestalt at Hedgebrook because this land has been tended to and protected by women. Coming on the land provides writers with a polyvagal reset.
The Japanese term for "forest bathing" is shinrin-yoku (森林浴). It's a practice of immersing oneself in nature to experience its restorative benefits. The plethora of feminine energy makes Hedgebrook a welcoming, expansive environment. It's no surprise that writers are able to access their deepest wells of storytelling here.