North Texas author Sarah Damoff spent years working in child welfare before turning to fiction, an experience that continues to inform the questions she asks about families, relationships and the forces that shape people over time.
Damoff, author of the 2025 novel The Bright Years and the recently published The Burning Side, spoke with KETR during Brittany's Favorite Things, an author and wellness event held Sept. 12 in Melissa.
Her work in social services did not simply provide material for fiction, Damoff said. It helped shape the way she approaches characters whose actions may be difficult to understand.
"I think a lot of what I write is an exercise in empathy," Damoff said.
Fiction, she said, offers a particular freedom to explore people's motivations and family dynamics without the limitations that necessarily accompany writing about real people.
That approach is central to The Burning Side, which follows married couple April and Leo after a fire severely damages their home as their relationship is facing damage of its own.
Damoff said the fire initially served a practical purpose in constructing the story. As she continued writing, however, the damaged house developed into a metaphor for the marriage itself. Neither has been completely destroyed, leaving the characters to confront what remains and whether it can be salvaged.
April and Leo also enter their marriage from markedly different economic and family backgrounds. Leo grew up with significant poverty, while April came from a family with greater financial resources and stability. Those experiences influence their respective ideas about security, raising children and responding to people in need.
The questions fit into a subject Damoff expects to continue exploring in her writing: generational cycles and the influence of families of origin.
Place matters, too.
Damoff was born in Dallas and again lives in the city, and both of her published novels are set in North Texas. The Bright Years takes place in Fort Worth, while The Burning Side provided Damoff another opportunity to depict a part of the country she says is not represented in literature as often as places such as New York.
Sometimes that effort involves larger questions about culture and identity. Other times, it involves defending a bit of Texas vocabulary to an editor who had never encountered the phrase "dad gum."
Damoff's conversation with KETR also explores her unconventional path into publishing, why she tries to understand characters even when she disagrees with their choices, and what she would tell someone considering putting a story of their own on the page.
Listen to the full KETR feature above.
