Sarah Coe Chambliss
Sarah, AKA “Coe” Chambliss is a student, screenwriter, poet, storyteller and filmmaker. She’s a Chicago native, but she currently lives in Los Angeles, where she's studying Film Production at LACC.
Coe started developing roots in writing when she was 9 years old, when her grandmother gifted her a journal for her birthday. She started writing about any and everything; from toxic family environments to feelings of disconnection being a black masculine girl. Coe eventually found an artistic home with the Spoken Word Club at Oak Park River Forest High School. In the club, she was able to discover her love for writing, beyond it being an escape from her stormy home life. The club also provided an alternative to street life, something that was easily accessible and ever-present for a young black kid in Chicago. Especially a fatherless one like herself. Even with all of the benefits of Spoken Word Club, Coe still didn’t have a primary focus, so her grades suffered, and she barely graduated high school because of it.
After graduating from OPRF, she joined the Army of the United States. She wanted to go to college, but she didn’t have the grades for it. The decision was deemed “sudden” and “out of the blue”, amongst her family and friends alike, yet she went on to serve for 3 years as a Supply Sergent and was honorably discharged. The military sparked a desire in her to travel, so she spent her post military years going to as many places as she could. She’s been to London, Amsterdam, Jamacia and somehow, even Moscow, to name a few places. These were all experiences that added to her world view and expanded her creative mind.
Writing Prompts
Write about a time you had to forgive someone/someone had to forgive you
Write about what it would be like to return to a place you have moved on from
Write about a place you want to escape to or person you want to escape with
As for current works, Coe has just finished her first pilot for a Dramady called “The Ha-Ha-Heal" which is centered around a recovering addict, Camielle, who is using stand-up comedy to help starve her drug addiction. Coe is also trying her hand at feature film writing, and a mirid of other writing outlets. Her goal is to put out content that is both fresh and reflective.
The impact of poetry and the spoken word club
Poetry is a language that I always spoke, even as a child, unbeknownst to me. It started with me, trying to rhyme words in my journal (due to hip hop’s massive influence on my life). After a certain age though, around my mid-teens, it became less about rhyming words in a journal, and more about expressing my complete thoughts or feelings about something. This is also the age where poetry became more of an escape for me. It was something familiar, a refuge, when I felt surrounded by strangers. Enter the Spoken Word Club at Oak Park and River Forest High School. The Spoken Word Club Program at OPRF helped me to realize myself as a writer with a unique creative voice. Under the tutelage of Peter Kahn, and at the time, Dan Sullivan, a bunch of broken kids like myself, from all walks of life, collaborated to make a common ground that we all walk on to this day. Spoken Word club taught me early the importance of collaboration, something that I'm still learning about in my 30’s. Being in the club consisted of one writing their own poem, then grouping together with 3 or 4 kids with their own poems and making one united poem. The beauty in this process was that sometimes it was ugly. 4 to 5 teenagers who were different from one another working together? There was bound to be some turbulence, people upset with their group members, and so on. Isn’t that life though? Collaborating with people that you may not initially agree with, hell, you may even have different poems about life. But the goal was to be united and to take MANY and make ONE. This is a gem that I'm still digging out of the ground that Spoken Word Club helped bring to light. I’m forever grateful to the program for being an outlet, a stage, a mic, and a silent but deafening presence in my life.
Top favorite poets or lyricists
Jamila Woods, Patricia Smith, and Rachel Long