ABOUT

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ABOUT 
Sarah Shourd is an award-winning author, investigative journalist, and playwright based in Oakland, CA. Over the last decade the majority of her work has centered around exposing the inhumanity of solitary confinement and the ways in which the practice enables mass incarceration in US prisons. Shourd’s approach to her work in many ways reflects her unique life experiences. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, she became actively involved in the antiwar movement while finishing her undergraduate work at University of California, Berkeley. During this time, Shourd also lived as an International Human Rights Observer in Zapatista indigenous communities in Chiapas, Mexico. In 2008 she moved to Damascus, Syria, to study Arabic, teach Iraqi refugees, and start out as a journalist. In 2009, Shourd’s life took a dramatic turn when she was captured by Iranian border guards while hiking near a tourist site in Northern Iraqi Kurdistan and imprisoned as a political hostage. Shourd was tortured and imprisoned in incommunicado, solitary confinement for 410 days in Iran’s Evin Prison.
​After her release in 2010, Shourd became an internationally known advocate against the overuse of solitary confinement in US prisons. As a UC Berkeley Visiting Scholar, she conducted a three-year investigation into isolation in US prisons, interviewing 75 prisoners in 13 prisons across the country. Based on this investigation, Shourd wrote and produced a play, The BOX, which premiered in San Francisco in 2016 to sold-out audiences. She also co-authored an anthology, Hell Is a Very Small Place, comprising the stories she collected from incarcerated Americans. Her op-eds and journalism have been published by the New York Times, Mother Jones, The Daily Beast, CNN, San Francisco Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Reuters, and many more. She was a Ragdale Artist-in-Residence in 2015, one of 7x7 magazine’s HOT 20 and a recipient of the GLIDE Memorial Church Community Hero Award in 2016, and chosen for the prestigious John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford University in 2018.

Awards & Honors

My Work Has Received Support From
Art4Justice, California Endowment, Entrekin Family Foundation, Fleishhacker Foundation, Flora Foundation, Forward Foundation, Further Foundation, Neda Nobari Foundation, Pacific Foundation Services/Yellow Chair Foundation, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, Rembe/Rock Foundation, Shuttleworth Foundation Flash Grant, Vital Projects, Wattis Foundation, and Zellerbach Family Foundation, as well as thousands of individual donors.

Fellowships & Residencies

Affiliations
American Civil Liberties Union, American Friends Service Committee, American University, Amnesty International, Anti-Recidivism Coalition, The Bail Project, Cal Matters, CIVIC Ambassador, Code Pink, Daily Beast, Democracy Now!, Dream Corps, Each with Children, Mother Jones, National Iranian-American Committee, National Religious Campaign Against Torture, Prison Law Office, Prison Legal News, Reveal, Solitary Watch, Stanford Graphic Novel Project, Success Center, Underground Scholars, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, United4Iran, Uptown People’s Law Center, Z Space

Public Speaking
I’ve spoken at dozens of universities, private events, rallies and conferences such as American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International Key Note, Beyond Bars Conference, California Innocence Project, Conference for New Ideas, Chicago Northwestern University, Evergreen State College, Florida State, Howard Zinn Book Fair, Lick-Wilmerding High School in San Francisco, Nueva Intersession in San Mateo, Martha’s Vineyard, National Lawyers Guild, Princeton University, Pulitzer Center, SF Jail’s Reentry Program, SF’s Public Defender's Office, Stanford Bechtel I-Center, The Greater than Gatsby Gala, The Media Rumble Conference in New Delhi, UCLA, and many more.