Small Town Dispatches: Sonya Lara

Welcome to Small Town Dispatches, a feature on The Peak that recognizes the efforts of sustaining a writing practice in places with unconventional resources. Writing can be deeply isolating, especially when you live outside of cities that are seen as cultural epicenters. So here, Special Features Editor Nadeen Kharputly interviews Shenandoah contributors to gain insights about what it’s like to live in small towns (and towns that feel small): rural areas, college towns, islands, hamlets, and more.

Writer: Sonya Lara

Town: Ripon, WI

Bio: Sonya Lara is a biracial Mexican American writer. She received her BA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her MFA in Poetry from Virginia Tech. Her work appeared or is forthcoming in The Maine Review, Frontier, Shenandoah, Ninth Letter, AGNI, The Los Angeles Review, The Acentos Review, and elsewhere. She was accepted for the Peter Bullough Foundation Residency, the Blue Mountain Center Residency, the Good Hart Artist Residency, the Shenandoah National Park Artist-in-Residence Residency, and others. Sonya was the recipient of the Wisconsin’s Own Library Poet in Residence Fellowship and the Studios Fellowship through The Studios at MASS MoCA. Additionally, she was a finalist for the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing Poetry Fellowship, the Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship, and the Outpost Residency Fellowship, and was shortlisted for The Eavan Boland Emerging Poet Award and runner-up in Shenandoah’s Graybeal-Gowen Prize for Virginia Poets. For more information, please visit sonyalara.com.

Tell us about your small town—how small is it?

I currently live in Ripon, WI* which has a population of 7,192 people. The downtown area is perhaps one city block, maybe less, with empty storefronts that remind people of the past: RadioShack, Benjamin Franklin (I have no clue what this store carried; it’s now the Ripon College’s university store), and Vitamin Shoppe. There’s only one coffee shop near my place and, because I teach at Ripon College, I avoid it at all costs––it’s where all of the students go to work on their assignments. The college itself has less than 700 students, with many of the students traveling home on the weekends.

* In 2025, Sonya moved from Ripon to Prague.

What makes your town a unique place for your writing practice?

Ripon is not a very well-known town outside of Wisconsin residents. Even the college itself, Ripon College, is not one that people outside of the state have heard much about. However, the Poet in Residence Fellowship through Ripon College leads me to believe that the college, and in turn town, are open to new ideas. This, to me, makes me hopeful that the arts are being supported and that residents want to meet new people that they may not have otherwise. When I first arrived, I was shocked to discover how small the town truly was. I wondered if I’d made a mistake moving here for the fellowship. I joked that if there was nothing to do in town, then I’d have no excuses as to why I couldn’t write and finish certain projects of mine. But the more I walked around the town, the more I realized I wanted to engage with young writers; I didn’t want

to tuck myself away from the world entirely. I thought back to my own upbringing and the teachers who were pivotal in me pursuing writing seriously. It made me pause and reflect over my own writing practice––what did I need to feel supported and how could I, in turn, support others similarly? Living here has pushed me to think outside of myself more often.

Do you have a favorite writing spot?

While I’m still searching for my favorite writing spot, I’ve discovered that my weekly walks are when I think best––they anchor me. There isn’t much around the college other than neighborhoods, so I spend most afternoons and weekends wandering the sidewalked-paths. Something to know about me is that I love trees. If I see a cool or weird looking tree, I’ll stop, place a palm against the trunk, and take a moment to appreciate its grandness. Sometimes, I’ll even take a picture of it. But although some people may grow bored of walking the same sidewalks again and again, I don’t. To me, they allow me to not only think through writing ideas, but also to remember previous thoughts that surfaced from earlier walks. I’ll pass the light green house with the pink roof and think, “there’s the watermelon house. Last time I walked past this place, I was working through an angry conversation I had with my father.” Then I’ll walk past a favorite tree, the one with ogre-looking toes, and think, “Last time I was here, I admitted to Leslie that I’m struggling with my depression.” Those resurfaced memories allow me to think about my life experiences from different angles. That reprocessing then transforms to poems or creative nonfiction essays. If I can remember a conversation or thought I had from a house or tree that has no direct connection to my life, then there must be something to those memories that I need to write about. They show me what I’m still working through and allow me to build new connections that I hadn’t thought of previously.

How do you build community with other writers or creatives in your town?

Right now, I’m focused on connecting with young writers. Although I teach at Ripon College, I visited a poetry class at Ripon Public High School to talk to young writers about everything that poetry is and can be. Poetry doesn’t always have the best track record when it comes to approachability––I wanted to change that. I challenged the students’ notions of what poetry is and connected the outside world, like some of their favorite musical artists, to the power of lyrical writing. I showed a PowerPoint with “fun” poetic forms and invited students to be creative as they designed and wrote their own poems. Additionally, I’m working with librarians at the Ripon Public Library to work with young writers outside of school. I’m designing a two-hour poetry workshop where anyone can come, for free, to learn about poetry and to make some of their own. I think it’s critical to support writers when they’re young and to encourage the mentality that anyone can write. While I think working with students in schools is great and necessary, I don’t want to overlook the fact that not everyone can sign up to take creative writing courses, like poetry, during their education. By working with the public library, I hope to engage with the general public and meet with people who I may not have been able to work with.

What are some of the challenges of living there?

Living in a small town in Wisconsin definitely presents some challenges politically. There’s one house, in particular, that’s on one of my running routes that always makes me feel uncomfortable. The entirety of the front yard is covered in Trump memorabilia––signs, posters, flyers, etc. It’s difficult to not feel unsafe in certain parts of the area when a lot of the rural parts of Wisconsin are red. There’s also a huge lack of culturally diverse food within arms reach. Because I grew up in Chicago, and then later the suburbs of Chicago, I got used to being able to not only find a wealth of restaurants, but also to hear countless different languages being spoken. Ripon doesn’t have multitudes of restaurants outside of burger places or breakfast diners, so I often find myself staying in and cooking my own meals. And while it does save me money to stay in, I miss the community aspect of enjoying a meal with others, even if I don’t know the others around me. Just hearing a specific language, like Spanish for me, or smelling a certain dish that reminds me of home makes me feel much less alone. Without that, it can be easy to feel as if I’m the only one in Ripon with certain lived experiences, even though that’s not true.