Sarah Saffian's Biography

SARAH SAFFIAN is an author, a journalist, and a teacher. Ithaka (hardcover: Basic Books, 1998; paperback: Dell, 1999), her critically-acclaimed memoir of being an adoptee who was found by her birth family—both parents and three full siblings—has become an adoption classic. The book was widely and favorably reviewed—by The New York Times Book Review, USA Today, The Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, Slate, Salon,Francine Prose for Elle, Glamour, Redbook, and numerous other publications. Ithaka has been translated into Italian (Itaca, Corbaccio), and in 2006, it was published in a new edition with a current Afterword. An excerpt from Ithaka is currently running in 614: The HBI Ezine, an online magazine for Jewish women published by Brandeis University.

Formerly a writing professor at the New School, where she taught journalism to undergraduates, Sarah has also worked as a Senior Editor for Entertainment Weekly, a Contributing Editor for Rosie, a Senior Writer for Us magazine, and a Staff Writer for The New York Daily News. She has written for publications including The New York Times, The Village Voice, The San Francisco Chronicle, Harper's Bazaar, Redbook, New York, Cosmopolitan, Slate, and Reader's Digest, where she has pieces in their February and March 2009 issues. 

Each July, Sarah teaches courses in memoir and narrative journalism at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. She created an online course about identity through Harvard Law School, and recently completed an essay to be included in an upcoming anthology on parent loss that will also feature pieces by Rick Moody, Amy Bloom, David Gates, and others. Sarah has been a writer-in-residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Millay Colony for the Arts, graduated with Honors in English and American Literature from Brown University and received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Columbia. She is currently at work on a novel, her first foray into fiction.