Sarah Bird
Sarah Bird is a bestselling novelist, screenwriter, essayist, and journalist who has lived in Austin, Texas since long before the city became internationally cool. She has published ten novels and two books of essays. Her eleventh novel, LAST DANCE ON THE STARLITE PIER--a gripping tale set in the secret world of the dance marathons of the Great Depression--will be released on April 12th.
Her last novel, DAUGHTER OF A DAUGHTER OF A QUEEN--inspired by the true story of the only woman to serve with the legendary Buffalo Soldiers--was named an All-time Best Books about Texas by the Austin American-Statesman; Best Fiction of 2018, Christian Science Monitor; Favorite Books of 2018, Texas Observer; a One City, One Book choice of seven cities; and a Lit Lovers Book Club Favorites.
Sarah was a finalist for The Dublin International Literary Award; an ALEX award winner; Amazon Literature Best of the Year selection; a two-time winner of the TIL’s Best Novel award; a B&N’s Discover Great Writers selection; a New York Public Libraries Books to Remember; an honoree of theTexas Writers Hall of Fame; an Amazon Literature Best of the Year selection; a Dobie-Paisano Fellowship; and an Austin Libraries Illumine Award for Excellence in Fiction winner. In 2014 she was named Texas Writer of the Year by the Texas Book Festival and presented with a pair of custom-made boots on the floor of the Texas Senate Chamber.
Sarah is a nine-time winner of Austin Best Fiction Writer award. She was recently honored with the University of New Mexico’s 2020 Paul Ré Award for Cultural Advocacy. In 2015 Sarah was one of eight winners selected from 3,800 entries to attend the Meryl Streep Screenwriters’ Lab. Sarah was chosen in 2017 to represent the Austin Public Library as the hologram/greeter installed in the Austin Downtown Library. Sarah was a co-founder of The Writers League of Texas.
She has been an NPR Moth Radio Hour storyteller; a writer for Oprah’s Magazine, NY Times Sunday Magazine and Op Ed columns, Chicago Tribune, Real Simple, Mademoiselle, Glamour, Salon, Daily Beast, Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, MS, Texas Observer; Alcalde and a columnist for years for Texas Monthly. As a screenwriter, she worked on projects for Warner Bros., Paramount, CBS, National Geographic, Hallmark, ABC, TNT, as well as several independent producers.
She and her husband enjoy open-water swimming and training their corgi puppy not to eat the furniture.
“As she swallow a few more drops, I whisper to my child's namesake, "The first of untold numbers of sweet things you will taste in this life." It is my blessing.”
“I can't recall consciously deciding to trick time, but that is what has happened. Somehow Martin and I, instead of being leashed for all eternity to what happened sixteen years ago, instead of that being the huge Before and After defining my life, have been set free.”
“I guess I have to thank Shupe and all that marching for something, because my butt is as springy as a bag of Gummi Bears.”
“I read once that it takes fourteen miles for an oil tanker to change course. The same change for mothers and daughters must take a nearly equal number of years. But in all those miles and years there does come one precise moment, one discrete point in an infinite vastness, when you start heading in an entirely new direction. I know that, for better or for worse, Aubrey and I have hit that moment when instead of arguing with me, fighting to convince me to accept what she wants, she states in a steady, even way that doesn't ask for my permission or seem ready to bristle when I don't offer it, "Mom, I have to go.”
“That is when I realize that I have the same gift he does: We can give each other back our youth.”
“Going beyond sarcasm straight to out-and-out insult is delicious, like wriggling out of a pair of Spanx.”
“Do you like the sunset I ordered for you?”
“I find it hard to hate a man who brings you exactly what you didn't even know you craved.”
“How exactly are you supposed to force your way into someone's life? Like I said, I have nothing she wants anymore. Not even, or especially not, my love.”
“At almost any time in the past sixteen years, hearing him admit how much the sound of my voice, even channeled through our daughter, still affected him would have felt like winning. Today, it's close to irrelevant.”
“I want to go to the mother, take her hand, and tell her that although she and her daughter believe that every bad choice the daughter has ever made in life is her fault, it's not. It's really, really not.”
“I guess that's what my dad did. Stopped agreeing with reality. I could do it for as long as it took me to get from my classroom to the office. He managed it for sixteen years. He must have had more mental discipline than me. Or maybe it wasn't that much of an effort to pretend that I didn't exist.”
“I would like whispering with someone who is like me. But no one is.I think it is because my sizzle doesn't match anyone else's. I want something to happen so bad that it sizzles inside of me. It never stops, but it also never fits any of the choices presented.”
“I guess that after three straight years of my not being anything -- not emo, not Christian, not prep, not jock, not ghetto, not punk, not hipster, not skank, not prude, just a half-assed band geek -- no one can believe I'd do anything so well defined as lie. I like my new superpower.”
“My father." I don't even know what punctuation mark to put after those two words. Lots of exclamation points!!! One lonely question mark? I need a cartoon balloon with every symbol available in it. Something that stands for stunned/terrified/pissed off/excited/depressed/happy/mad.”
“In a lot of ways, Mom is kind of badass.”
“So much is exploding inside of me that I feel like a bag of Orville Redenbacher's in the microwave. Too much has happened all at once. I stagnated for years with nothing happening, and now, all in one day, too much is happening.”
“I shrug and smile amiably the way you do when you're in a foreign country and have no idea what anyone is saying, so you end up grinning and nodding your way into a three-way with a henna vendor and a camel.”