Author: Sonja Crafts

Sonja Crafts has an MFA in Creative Writing from Temple University, a BA in Philosophy and Writing from the University of Pittsburgh, and a Certificate in Sustainable Agriculture from the University of Massachusetts. She writes fiction, creative nonfiction, and ghostwrites blogs on a variety of subjects, and is currently in the final revision stages of her fourth novel. She lives with her husband (Jeremy Hauck) and two children, splitting time between Lancaster, PA, where her children attend school, and Midland, Ohio, where she is working to develop the Wild Lot House, a rural writing retreat.

The Wild Spaces of Children’s Stories

Sonja Crafts
January 25, 2018

Willy Wonka “discovers” the exit from the black and white room.

The portal — a secret opening or entrance to a fantastical world, starkly different from the ordinary world that surrounds us — is found everywhere in children’s literature and film. It serves as an escape route from the mundane, and the magic of the world beyond the portal is often underscored by the drabness or unhappiness of the real world that precedes it. Examples abound: from the claustrophobic black-and-white patterned room (and, of course, Charlie’s life of poverty) that leads toward the candy-filled wonderland in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the colorless farm scenes and harrowing tornado that brings us to Oz, and of course the foreboding old mansion that the children evacuate to during World War II that houses the magical wardrobe/secret entrance to Narnia in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Most children will instantly relate to the thrill of discovery that Charlie and Dorothy and Lucy feel when they first set foot in these wonderlands, despite the fact that this is something — entering a fantastical world through a magic passage — no one in real life can actually experience. So why is this feeling so recognizable?

Victory Gardens, and Alternative Uses for the Disused Lot

Sonja Crafts
April 20, 2017

Many times, when we view an abandoned space in an otherwise populated area, our automatic reaction is to mourn the loss of its use value—here is a house that’s been allowed to decay instead of provide shelter, here is a piece of land which could be productive, a lawn, a park, a homesite, but is instead overtaken by weeds. “What a waste!” we think. In large cities that have suffered population loss after deindustrialization, places like Baltimore and Philadelphia, entire neighborhoods are mottled with abandoned spaces, lost usefulness. Even the house cats are feral.

One common desire we have is to want to rehab and reclaim—undo the harm nature or other humans have done and bring the space back into perfect human usefulness. This idea has been slickly packaged and sold to us in so many iterations of the home renovation show. As the tide of exodus of the middle class from cities turns and metro populations begin to swell again, land values increase, old homes are renovated and new homes are built in old spaces. In the early stages of redevelopment, as the wealth of neighborhoods increases along with the expectations of the residents, the “eyesore” of the abandoned lot is no longer tolerated. But as changes begin to materialize, before vacant land gives rise to condominiums, businesses, and more cultivated permanent uses, one of our favorite initial practices is to transform it more moderately. Say, into a community garden.

The Wild Lot in Schulz’s Pan

Sonja Crafts
March 6, 2017

With our early posts on Wild Lot, we thought we could attempt to illustrate our personal interest in the topics we hope to explore on this blog, namely, the role natural setting plays in forming and inspiring creative writers, and how our favorite authors, in recognition that we, through our fragile civilization, are only one small and superficial step removed from being wild ourselves, often use nature as an apt symbol for humanity. So, in the spirit of this, my first post will be a bit autobiographical…

I was in a creative writing class my first semester at the University of Pittsburgh, early 2000s. We each had to bring in a short story that was important to us as fledgling writers. I don’t remember what I brought in. But one student (Jared, I think?) brought in a photocopied excerpt of Polish author, Bruno Schulz’s Street of Crocodiles/Cinnamon Shops entitled “Pan.”