Erica Bauermeister Reveals Sharp as Ink, a Novel About a Writer Who Grew Up Around Books

Erica Bauermeister’s new novel, Sharp as Ink, follows a Melville scholar’s daughter who leaves graduate school and sets out to become a writer. Park Row will publish the book in the United States on June 1, 2027, and preorders are open. Bauermeister revealed the cover through People on November 4, along with the novel’s prologue and the story of the party conversation that helped inspire it. Read the cover reveal and excerpt.

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What is Sharp as Ink about?

Jayne Armitage grows up in a family where literature is an academic pursuit. After a tragedy, she leaves graduate school and takes a job as a barista, upending her family’s expectations. At work she meets Edward, a diamond consultant who takes her ambitions seriously. His faith in her writing is part of the attraction, but the closer they get, the more reason Jayne has to question the relationship. Source: Bauermeister’s interview and the plot preview in People.

The prologue takes place after Jayne has made a career writing romance. She addresses the reader as if she’s writing a memoir, weighing what readers expect from a thriller opening against the trust a memoirist needs to earn. Then she drops an unsettling detail about a dark driveway. The voice is funny enough to make you want to trust her, even as she explains how easily a writer can tilt a story.

The party dare that helped inspire the novel

Bauermeister told People that at a party in 2010, a woman asked what she might write under the name Erika Stone. At the time, Bauermeister was known for her debut, The School of Essential Ingredients, which follows the lives of students in a cooking class. She heard a challenge in the imagined name. Jayne came to her years later, and writing in Jayne’s voice gave her room to explore subjects she’d previously felt uncomfortable putting on the page.

There’s a neat echo between that conversation and the setup of the novel. Bauermeister was asked to imagine the work she might do under another name. Jayne has to decide what kind of writer she can become once she steps away from the role her family imagined for her. Edward’s encouragement makes that question more interesting. What happens when the person who gives you confidence is also someone you’re starting to doubt?

What to read while you wait

If Jayne’s life around books is what draws you in, start with No Two Persons. It follows an aspiring writer named Alice and nine people who encounter her debut novel. In No Two Persons, the pleasure is seeing how differently readers interpret the same book. In the Sharp as Ink prologue, the tension comes from a writer trying to shape how we interpret her own life.

• Find No Two Persons on Amazon if you want another Bauermeister novel about a writer and the people who read her work.
• Find The Scent Keeper on Amazon if you’d prefer a story about a girl whose father teaches her to understand the world through smell. It was the February 2020 Reese’s Book Club pick. See the official selection.
• Find The School of Essential Ingredients on Amazon to read the cooking-class novel Bauermeister was discussing when she got the dare.

For a group read, see How to Pick a Book Club Book Everyone Can Finish.

When does Sharp as Ink come out?

Sharp as Ink is scheduled for June 1, 2027 in the U.S. The Park Row hardcover is listed at 384 pages with ISBN 9780778332602.

Check Amazon for Sharp as Ink preorders if you’d like to reserve a copy.

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