Sarah Smarsh

Sarah Smarsh (born 8 August 1980) is an American journalist and nonfiction writer.

Sarah Smarsh
Smarsh at the 2024 Texas Book Festival.
Born	(1980-08-08) August 8, 1980 (age 44) Kingman, Kansas, U.S.[1]
Occupation	Writer
Education	University of Kansas (BA) Columbia University (MFA)
Genre	Nonfiction

Background

Smarsh was born in rural Kansas and grew up on farms and in small towns. Her family moved frequently, and she attended eight schools before she reached ninth grade.^[2] As a first generation college student,^[3] she attended the University of Kansas starting in 1998, and received her MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University.^[4][5]

While in fifth grade, Smarsh wrote a story about her family for a class assignment. Her teacher at the time sent the story to a national children's magazine, where it was then published. After the story was published, Smarsh told her family that she would one day publish a full book about them.^[2]

She has been a fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.^[6] She has written for publications including the Columbia Journalism Review, The New York Times, The Guardian, and The New Yorker.^[7]

Published works

Published in 2018, Heartland is an autobiographical work which focuses on the lives of her family members, white blue-collar residents of the Midwestern and Southern United States; the book was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Kirkus Prize^[8] and a 2019 recipient of the Kansas Notable Book Award.^[9] She Come By It Natural (2020) is a collection of essays about Dolly Parton, provoked by stereotyped coverage of rural people in the context of the 2016 election.^{[10][11][12][13]} The book was a finalist for the nonfiction category of the National Books Critics Circle Award.^[14]

• Bone of the Bone, 2024.

Other works

In 2019, Smarsh started the podcast The Homecomers. The podcast spotlights and interviews people from rural and working class communities, similar to the ones that Smarsh herself grew up in, in order to dispel stereotypes about themselves and the places where they live.^[15][16][17]