REAL BIO: I’m a writer, journalist, and translator (as well as a runner, reader, mom, Cheeto enthusiast, and eager if uncool dancer and singer). I’ve written two books so far and translated one—Federico Falco’s delightful Cielos de Córdoba.

My first book, the essay collection Mine, is a mediation on ownership and loss that includes an essay about living among Robert Durst’s furniture and another about a dead opossum. It won some prizes, including the River Teeth Nonfiction Book Prize and the Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award, and was short- or long-listed for others, including the Pen Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards, and a Lambda Literary Award. LitHub also called Mine a favorite books of 2018, which was nice of them.

My newest book, To Name the Bigger Lie: A Memoir in Two Stories, is a hybrid memoir about, among other things, conspiracies, high school romance and Plato. It was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and was named a best book of the year by NPR and, again, LitHub. TNTBL was also a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award.

I teach in the creative writing program at Arizona State University and I contribute to the New York Times Magazine, where I was a finalist for a National Magazine Award in feature writing in 2021. I was lucky enough to get a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 2020 and a Fulbright Student Grant to Colombia many ages ago, in 2011. I live with my partner, two kids, and our sweet potato-dog Oki in Arizona.

SHORT THIRD-PERSON BIO: Sarah Viren is writer, journalist and translator. She’s the author of two books, MINE and TO NAME THE BIGGER LIE, and a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine. She’s been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Fulbright Student Grant, among other honors, and been a finalist for several book prizes, including twice a Lambda Literary Award. She teaches in the creative writing program at Arizona State University.