Meet Sarah Berke of Esperance Creative

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sarah Berke.

Hi Sarah, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I’m a novelist and small business owner who helps professional and aspiring professional creatives. I started Esperance Creative in 2024 to help creatives build the confidence to share their work and take up space with their craft. I love to help creatives find the courage to claim their space in the world through consulting, coaching, and web site creation.

I’m a former managing director for academic societies and education-related professional associations where my specialties were non-profit corporate governance, strategy, leadership, talent development, communications, budgeting, and project management. I have degrees in Journalism and Child and Family Development in addition to a certificate in Personal and Organizational Leadership from the University of Georgia. In 2020, after over a decade in non-profit corporation management, I traded herding volunteers for writing upmarket book club fiction and negotiating with my spirited and strong-willed daughters. I’m a member of and volunteer for the Women’s Fiction Writers Association.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The career of a professional (or aspiring professional) creative is one filled with waiting and rejection. After three years searching for an agent—with lots of rejection along the way!—I signed with one in 2024 only to mutually realize we’re a creative mismatch. And, of course, starting a new business is always a slow road to growth, but I’ve found that patience, optimism, and support go a long way in making the road feel a bit less bumpy.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
With Esperance Creative, my mission is to facilitate the development of professional and aspiring professional creatives and the professionals who support them in a boutique, non-corporatized environment, and to engage meaningfully with social issues related to literacy. Some of my target clients include: writers (and editors, cover designers, agents, publishers, and the like!), gallery owners, craft show organizers, performance artists, potters, painters, jewelers, sculptors, woodworkers, florists, graphic designers, and anyone identifying else as an artisan or craftsperson.

Because I’m a creative myself, I understand how deeply personal it is to find your voice, cultivate your brand, and step into your identity as a creative. I take a person-centered approach and see myself as your coach and advocate, no matter what project we’re working on together. I want to help people feel empowered in the business of their creative work, whether that’s helping them write their own mission statements, consider their brand, create their web site (one of my very favorite kinds of projects!), help with executive functioning and time management, serve in a coaching or consulting capacity, and beyond. At the end of the day, my goal is to help professional and aspiring professional creatives and the related practitioners who support them.

I also want to note that many creators identify as BIPOC, neurodiverse, LGBTQIA+, or other marginalized or underrepresented voices. At Esperance Creative we pledge to uphold a welcoming culture of non-discrimination. We strive to create a safe space for all people, and intolerant, ignorant, or otherwise hate-based speech is not welcome here.

In addition to my business, I’m also an author, specifically of both book club fiction and essays I publish on my website and through my free newsletter, Eliciting Esperance. These essays are published every other month and cover everything from book recommendations to motherhood to reactions to current events and personal experiences— basically life and the human condition. I strive to be thoughtful, vulnerable, raw, and authentic, and I hope they’re a little beacon of positivity in a crowded, and often negative, content world.

My hope is that when someone reads my work—whether my fiction (fingers crossed, as it’s yet unpublished!) or my essays that they come away connected to something within themselves, that they feel seen, and that it leaves readers thinking about how they can understand and care for themselves and others a bit more.

What do you like and dislike about the city?
Well, I’m a homebody suburban mom whose love language is food, so my favorite things are places I can take my kids to—like all of our wonderful parks and playgrounds, the Chattahoochee Nature Center, Fernbank, Children’s Museum, Atlanta Botanical Garden, and the zoo—or food related! We also absolutely love escaping to Blue Ridge.

Least favorite thing, hands down, is the traffic. Too many cars, and too many grumpy drivers!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.esperancecreative.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahjberke/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SarahJBerke
• Other: https://elicitingesperance.substack.com/

Image Credits
Katy Lockhart
Kaila Bruner