About me
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Sarah Shourd is a multi-media journalist and artist based in Oakland, California. Her work combined journalistic rigor with the tools of fiction to elevate marginalized voices and help audiences engage with information outside of their geographic and online bubbles. Most recently, Shourd hosted a podcast, Of Two Minds, about divisiveness in America. Before that, she conducted a 3-year investigation into solitary confinement, interviewing over 75 prisoners across the U.S. 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, comprised of the stories of incarcerated Americans she collected. Shourd’s written for the New York Times, CNN, SF Chronicle, Mother Jones, SF Magazine, the Daily Beast, Salon, Huffington Post and more. Shourd coauthored a book about her own imprisonment called A Sliver of Light: Three Americans in Iran, which was published by Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt in 2012. She was a UC Berkeley Visiting Scholar in 2014, a Ragdale Artist-in-Residence in 2015, one of 7x7 Magazine’s HOT 20 in 2016, a recipient of the GLIDE Memorial Church Community Hero Award in 2016 and is currently a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University, where she’s collaborating on a graphic novel.
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Awards and Recognitions
-2018 Performed LIVE on The Moth Podcast
-2017 Artist-in-Residence at Ragdale
-2016 A recipient of the GLIDE Memorial Church Community Hero Award
-2016 Selected as one of 7x7 Magazine’s HOT 20
-2016 Writer-in-Residence at Blue Mountain Center
-2015, '780 Days of Solitude,' selected for Best American Nonrequired Reading, published by Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt.
-2015, Interviewed on NPR’s All Things Considered about my article on prisoner access to Facebook.
-2014, Acceptance to Mesa Refuge Writing Retreat in Point Reyes Station, CA.
-2013, Awarded Shuttleworth Foundation Flash Grant, for “brilliance and new ideas.”
-2009, 3rd Place Winner for Transitions Abroad 2009 Narrative Travel Writing Contest, “Brave Eyes, Laughing Hearts: My First Encounter with Yemen.”
-2017 Artist-in-Residence at Ragdale
-2016 A recipient of the GLIDE Memorial Church Community Hero Award
-2016 Selected as one of 7x7 Magazine’s HOT 20
-2016 Writer-in-Residence at Blue Mountain Center
-2015, '780 Days of Solitude,' selected for Best American Nonrequired Reading, published by Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt.
-2015, Interviewed on NPR’s All Things Considered about my article on prisoner access to Facebook.
-2014, Acceptance to Mesa Refuge Writing Retreat in Point Reyes Station, CA.
-2013, Awarded Shuttleworth Foundation Flash Grant, for “brilliance and new ideas.”
-2009, 3rd Place Winner for Transitions Abroad 2009 Narrative Travel Writing Contest, “Brave Eyes, Laughing Hearts: My First Encounter with Yemen.”