SARAH PERRY (she/they) is a memoirist and essayist who writes about love, food culture, body image, trauma, gender-based violence, queerness, and the power dynamics that influence those concerns. She is the author of the memoir After the Eclipse: A Mother’s Murder, a Daughter’s Search, which was named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a Poets & Writers Notable Nonfiction Debut, and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers pick. Her essay collection, Sweet Nothings: Confessions of a Candy Lover, is forthcoming in February 2025 from Mariner/HarperCollins.
Perry teaches in the graduate program in Creative Writing at the Colorado State University. She was the 2019 McGee Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at Davidson College, and has also taught at Columbia University, the University of North Texas, Manhattanville College, The Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop, the Unterberg Poetry Center at the 92nd Street Y, and Catapult. Her writing has appeared in the Huffington Post, Off Assignment, Elle magazine, The Guardian, and other outlets.
Perry has received the 2020-2022 Tulsa Artist Fellowship, the 2018 Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award, and fellowships from the Edward F. Albee Foundation, VCCA, Playa, and The Studios of Key West. She holds an M.F.A. in nonfiction from Columbia University. Her essay “In Praise of the Gas Station Pie,” published in Cake Zine, was nominated for a 2024 M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award.
Perry is at work on two manuscripts: a sequel memoir titled The Book of Regrets and a work of true crime criticism called Two Daughters Were Away.
