Sara Van Arsdale

Sarah Van Arsdale holds a BA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and an MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College. Her first novel, Toward Amnesia, was published by Riverhead/Putnam in 1996. Her third novel is
currently with an agent.

Her articles, fiction, and poetry have appeared in local and national publications, including Publishers Weekly, The San Francisco Chronicle, Columbia Review, Oxford Magazine, San Francisco Magazine, Barnard Magazine, Lilith, and The Jewish Forward, and she has a regular book review column in Middlebury Magazine. She has served as a judge for the Ferro-Grumley Awards, the Lambda Literary Awards, and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. She is a member of the National Writers Union, the Publishing Triangle, and the NewYork Writers Workshop.

Ms. Van Arsdale has taught at colleges and universities from Vermont to California. She currently teaches at the Jewish Community 
Center with the New York Writers Workshop, the Gotham Writers Workshop, and the 92nd Street
Y. She is senior staff writer at Designer Monthly Magazine, and she is a coordinator of the BJ Reads Program, a collaboration of Congregation B¹nai Jeshrun and PS 166 in New York City, helping children learn to read.

Raised in northern New Jersey, Ms. Van Arsdale comes from a family of artists; her mother, Nancy Van Arsdale, is a photographer, her sister, Laura
Summer, is a painter, and her brother, Peter Van Arsdale, is a violin maker. Ms. Van Arsdale has lived in Northampton, Massachusetts, 
San Francisco, and Vermont. She currently divides her time between northern Vermont and New
York City. She is working on a collection of short stories and on a fourth novel.

Ms. Van Arsdale¹s first novel, Toward Amnesia, is about a woman who tries to induce amnesia in herself in an attempt to heal her broken  heart. Her new book, Blue, looks at amnesia from the perspective of a character who truly does have the condition. Ms. Van Arsdale says that she finds amnesia fascinating as it provides a lens through which an author can examinequestions of identity and origin.