Sarah Kay

New Arizona Fellow, 2022

Sarah Kay, New Arizona Fellow, is a writer, performer, and educator from New York City. She is the founder and co-director of Project VOICE, an organization that uses poetry to entertain, educate, and empower students and educators in classrooms and communities worldwide. Kay is the author of four books of poetry: B, No Matter the Wreckage, The Type, and All Our Wild Wonder. Kay has been a Hedgebrook Writer in Residence, a Serenbe Artist in Residence, and a Kundiman Fellow. During her time as a fellow, she researched and wrote about her Japanese American grandmother's experience in South Dakota at the end of World War II.

Selected Works

  • Mrs.: A poem in the New York Times about how a woman’s history, sacrifices, and identity can be erased when she is defined by her husband’s name.
  • A Bird Made of Birds: A piece shared at TED that draws on the wonders of starling murmurations, wasps, figs, and blue whales as an opportunity to find poetry.
  • Ghost Ship: A poem from her book No Matter the Wreckage about gender, family, memory, and the MV Plassy shipwreck on Inis Oírr, one of the Aran Islands of Ireland.