Biography SARAH SAFFIAN is a writing coach, an author, a journalist, and a teacher. Ithaka (hardcover: Basic Books, 1998; paperback: Dell, 1999), her critically-acclaimed memoir of being an adoptee who was found by her birth family—both parents and three full siblings—has become an adoption classic. The book was widely and favorably reviewed—by The New York Times Book Review, USA Today, The Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, Slate, Salon, Francine Prose for Elle, Glamour, Redbook, and numerous other publications. Ithaka has been translated into Italian (Itaca, Corbaccio), and in 2006, it was published in a new edition with a current Afterword. An excerpt from Ithaka is featured in 614: The HBI Ezine, an online magazine for Jewish women published by Brandeis University. A faculty member at the Literary Reportage program at NYU's Journalism Institute, Sarah also teaches courses in memoir and narrative journalism each July at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, and offers writing coaching/editing/ghost writing services under the rubric The Vertical Pronoun. She has contributed to publications including The New York Times, Yoga Journal, The Village Voice, The San Francisco Chronicle, Harper's Bazaar, Redbook, Reader's Digest, Slate, and Smithsonian. Formerly a journalism professor in the undergraduate writing department at the New School, Sarah has previously worked as the Editorial Director of She Writes, a Senior Editor for Entertainment Weekly, a Senior Writer for Us magazine, and a Staff Writer for The New York Daily News, and created an online course about identity through Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. In April 2010, Sarah traveled to Israel and Morocco as part of a delegation of 9 writers (3 from the U.S.) and 2 photographers invited by the University of Iowa's International Writing Program and funded by the State Department. She blogged from the field, and has contributed to a forthcoming e-book compilation of selected essays and photographs. Sarah has appeared extensively on television and radio, including: CNN, MSNBC, Today, Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood, Extra, Good Day New York, Cold Pizza, The Rosie O'Donnell Show, A&E Biography, Leeza, Leonard Lopate, Joan Hamburg, Diane Rehm, BBC Radio, and Boston's WMJX-FM (where she was a finalist for the "Exceptional Women Under 30" Award in 1998); and she co-hosted with NPR's Ray Suarez a pilot for a PBS talk show about books, called Latest Word. She has also appeared at live events around the country, including: the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, the Northwest Book Festival, the New York Public Library, the Modern Language Association, the American Adoption Congress, Bastard Nation, Concerned United Birthparents, the Harvard Medical School Conference, KGB Bar, and at Barnes & Noble, Borders, and numerous other bookstores—speaking about adoption issues, entertainment, and the craft and business of writing, and reading from Ithaka and other works. Sarah has been a writer-in-residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Millay Colony for the Arts, and recently completed an essay to be included in an upcoming anthology on parent loss that will also feature pieces by Rick Moody, Amy Bloom, David Gates, and others. She has volunteered as a workshop leader for Girls Write Now and serves on the Board of Directors of the New York City-based adoption agency Spence-Chapin Services and the Editorial Advisory Board of Adoptive Families magazine (which featured Ithaka in its 2005 round-up of all-time best adoption literature). Sarah graduated with Honors in English and American Literature from Brown and received an M.F.A. in Non-Fiction Writing from Columbia. A native New Yorker, she lives in Brooklyn with her husband, the editor and writer Charles Leerhsen, and their wheaten terrier, Frankie. Currently at work on a novel, her first foray into fiction, Sarah is a recovered actor, an undiscovered singer, and a Pisces. Visit She Writes