Sarah Menkedick is the author of Ordinary Insanity: Fear and the Silent Crisis of Motherhood in America and Homing Instincts: Early Motherhood on a Midwestern Farm.

Her journalism, essays, and book reviews have been featured in Harper’s, the New York Times, the New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Time, Pacific Standard, The New Republic, the Guardian, Oxford American, Guernica, The Paris Review Daily, and elsewhere.

Sarah’s first book, Homing Instincts, was longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and her essays have been nominated three times for The Best American Essays. Her cover story for Pacific Standard on second generation Mexican Americans was nominated for a New America Award. Her op-ed, “Why don’t people take writing about motherhood seriously? Because women do it,” for the Los Angeles Times, went viral and generated thousands of shares and comments.

Sarah was a Fulbright Fellow in Oaxaca, Mexico, reporting on return immigration. She has also received grants from the Dart Center, the Creative Nonfiction Foundation, and the Ohioana Foundation. She was the founder of Vela, a magazine of creative nonfiction written by women, where she collaborated with and edited the work of many women writers who would go on to publish award-winning books and essays.

Her newsletter “Terms of Endearment” is a Substack bestseller.

Sarah lived in Oaxaca, Mexico, for five years and has spent the past fifteen years traveling and working between Pittsburgh and Oaxaca with her Oaxacan husband and Oaxacan-American daughter. She speaks fluent Spanish and French, and is working on her Portuguese.

Sarah is represented by Alison Lewis at Frances Goldin Literary Agency.

 Get in touch with Sarah at sammenked(at)gmail.com.