Sarah Heady is a poet, essayist, and librettist interested in place, history, and the built environment. She is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Comfort (Spuyten Duyvil, 2022) and Niagara Transnational (Fourteen Hills, 2013, winner of the 2013 Michael Rubin Book Award), as well as the chapbook Corduroy Road (dancing girl press, 2021) and the limited edition letterpress book Tatted Insertion (San Francisco State University, 2014, with artist Leah Virsik).

Comfort, a meditation on female solitude, agency, and relationship set on the prairies of the American West, was a finalist for the 2022 Big Other Book Award for Poetry, the 2019 Ahsahta Press Sawtooth Poetry Prize, the 2017 National Poetry Series, the 2017 and 2016 Colorado Prizes for Poetry, the 2016 Omnidawn Open, and the 2016 Cleveland State University Poetry Center Open Book Competition, as well as a semifinalist for the 2017 Nightboat Poetry Prize and the 2016 Subito Press Poetry Contest.

Sarah is the librettist of Halcyon, a documentary opera about the death and life of a women’s college, currently in development with composer Joshua Groffman and producer Vital Opera. Halcyon debuted in summer 2016 at sold-out engagements in Dutchess County, NY and at the National Opera Center in New York City, where it returned in October 2018. 

Raised in New York State’s Hudson River Valley, Sarah holds an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and a BA from Oberlin College. She is the recipient of fellowships and residencies from the Corporation of Yaddo, Asylum Arts, In Cahoots, Bethany Arts Community, Art Farm, the Home School, and Summer Literary Seminars. She lives in San Francisco, where she co-edits Drop Leaf Press, a small women-run poetry collective.