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Sarah Smith

Sarah Jane Smith grew up on Magician Lake in rural southwestern Michigan. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from Western Michigan University and a Ph.D in English with Creative Dissertation from The University of Illinois at Chicago. She has taught at both universities, as well as at Kalamazoo Community College and Santa Fe Community College in New Mexico. Her last gig was a three-and-a-half-year stint teaching American literature and creative writing at South Miami School of the Arts.

No Thanks: and Other Stories, a novel-in-stories or a collection of linked short stories, appeared in 2000 from New Issues Press. Her short stories have appeared in Blue Mesa Review, Other Voices, The Madison Review, Third Coast, Passages North, New England Review and others. Two of her stories received Pushcart Prize nominations and "No Thanks" was re-nominated by Joyce Carol Oates. "Gar Fishing" was third runner-up in the University of Wisconsin's Chris O'Malley short story contest. "Turtle Hunting With Black," a story that appeared in New England Review, received a 1994 A WP Intro Award.

The first 35 pages of her novel manuscript, Magician Lake, received the D.H. Lawrence Fellowship from the University of New Mexico for their Taos Summer Writers' Conference. There she worked with Dan Mueller.

Once upon a time she canoed the Loxahatchee and camped in the Everglades.