Sarah Butler has three novels published by Picador in the UK and with fourteen international publishers: Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Love, Before The Fire and Jack and Bet. Her short fiction and poetry has been published in anthologies (Picador, Route, Tindal Street Press, Pen and Ink Press) and journals (including Butcher’s Dog and Bare Fiction).

Sarah studied English at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge; Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia; and Urban Studies at University College London. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from the Open University.

Sarah has been awarded an Arts Council ‘time to write’ award, held two Hawthornden writing fellowships, and a fellowship at Chateau de Lavigny in Switzerland. She runs writing workshops in a variety of settings, including schools, parks, libraries and museums. She has worked with writers as far afield as Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Stockholm, Sweden.

In 2007, Sarah established the literature consultancy UrbanWords, through which she explores the relationship between writing and place through prose, poetry and participatory projects. Recent writing residencies include writer-in-residence on London Underground (Central line); at Great Ormond Street Hospital; Tideline – a public art project linked to a major regeneration project in Belvedere, East London; and Stories From The Road – a project exploring personal stories of Oxford Road, Manchester.

Sarah joined Manchester Metropolitan University as Lecturer in Creative Writing in June 2018.