Sarah Shotland
Sarah Shotland is the author of the novel Junkette, and a playwright whose work has been performed in professional theaters around the world.
In 2009, she co-founded Words Without Walls, which brought creative writing classes to jails, prisons, and drug treatment centers in Pittsburgh until 2022. Her work has been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Heinz Endowments, The Pittsburgh Foundation, Staunton Farm Foundation, and Opportunity Fund. With Sheryl St. Germain, she coedited the literary anthology Words without Walls: Writers on Addiction, Violence & Incarceration, published by Trinity University Press in spring of 2015.
Sarah’s most recent work, Abolition is Everything, was published by Antenna Press. Abolition is Everything is a participatory, nonfiction project that combines research, reflection, and audience action & was created during her time as the 2021 Artist-in-residence at Antenna’s Paper Machine residency in New Orleans. Her essays about the prison system have appeared in The Iowa Review, Creative Nonfiction, Baltimore Review, and North American Review. Sarah regularly speaks and writes about art as a tool for prison abolition. You can listen to a super-quick, 140 second talk here.
Other residencies & fellowships include the SFAI Equal Justice Fellowship, Denver Lighthouse Fort Lyon Writer-in-Residence, Shiftwords Community + Public Art’s Psychogeography Residency, Pittsburgh’s Office of Public Art Creatives for Social Impact Fellowship, and the Madeline L’Engle Research in Fiction Fellowship from Smith College, where she used the special collections archives in researching her next novel. She is currently working on a short story collection that reimagines the lives of Catholic saints as modern-day sinners. Stories from that project have appeared or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, HOBART, Gulfstream, and Isthmus.
Her most recent play, Cereus Moonlight, was commissioned by miR Theater. After opening on the Space Coast of Florida, it played at the 25th annual Rhino Fest in Chicago. Other work for the stage has been performed in theaters in Dallas, Austin, New Orleans, and Chicago, and internationally in Spain and China. She’s also written commissioned work for Corningworks Dance and Sonarcheology Pittsburgh.
Sarah is an Associate Professor of English at Carlow University in Pittsburgh, where she also serves as the Chair of the Art, Communications, and English Department, Program Director of Madwomen in the Attic, and Special Assistant to the Provost’s Office. Her scholarly work explores the relationship between public art, public health, and public safety and the social practice of the literary arts.
Sarah is represented by Danielle Chiotti at Upstart Crow Literary.