Sara Rath

Author

I was born in the small central Wisconsin town of Manawa, where I graduated from Little Wolf High School. My undergraduate degree in English is from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and I have an MFA in Writing from Vermont College, Montpelier, Vermont.

When I began writing, poetry was my first love. Reviewers characterized my poems as possessing "an appealing toughness, sensitivity, and sensibility. They also offer a clear articulation of what being a fully sentient woman means in our present world." Poet Ron Wallace said "Over the years her poetry has become increasingly denser and richer, and it now ranks with that of some of our best poets..." Utah poet and writer Edward Lueders says "She's good, and she's getting better all the time. Her poems have nerve as well as music."

After the publication of Dancing With a Cowboy in 1991, I devoted my time to works of fiction and nonfiction. In 1994 was awarded a Wisconsin Arts Board Individual Artist's Grant to write Star Lake. In addition to recognition in 1984 with the Wisconsin Library Association's Banta Award for Remembering the Wilderness, I have received fellowships to the Ucross Foundation and The MacDowell Colony.

My television documentary, Views of a Cameraman, was recognized with a silver medal by the New York International Film & Television Festival and the Chicago International Film Festival issued an Award of Merit for my mystery/drama, Annzinetta. I received an Award of Merit from The State Historical Society of Wisconsin for my biography of the 19th century landscape photographer, Henry Hamilton Bennett.

During the 1980s I taught writing classes for the University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension, the Rhinelander School of the Arts, and was on the faculty of the Goddard College MFA in Writing Program from 1991 through 1994. I have frequently been invited to be a workshop-leader and lecturer at the Writer's Center in Chautauqua, NY. In October, 2006 and 2007, I taught a workshop in "Writing Personal Fiction" at The Clearing in Door County, Wisconsin and will do so again in June 2008.

I delivered a lecture in August 2004 on "Achsa Sprague: Green Mountain Mystic," in Plymouth Notch, Vermont -- the birthplace of Achsa Sprague and Sprague's distant relative, Calvin Coolidge. An excerpt from Solitarie , my as-yet unpublished biography of Achsa Sprague, was included in the Spring 2005 issue of the literary magazine, HUNGER MOUNTAIN . Solitarie is currently undergoing revision.

My second novel, Night Sisters, will be published in autumn 2008 by the University of Wisconsin Press.