Sara Pirkle is a Southern poet, an identical twin, a breast cancer survivor, and a board game enthusiast. Her first full-length collection of poetry, The Disappearing Act, won the Adrienne Bond Award for Poetry and was published by Mercer University Press in 2018. In 2019, she was nominated for Georgia Author of the Year in Poetry, and in 2022 she was shortlisted for the Oxford Poetry Prize. She also dabbles in songwriting and co-wrote a song on Remy Le Boeuf’s album, Architecture of Storms, which was nominated for a 2023 GRAMMY in the Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album category.
Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, the Best of the Net Anthology twice, and the Independent Best American Poetry Award. She has published in dozens of literary journals under the name Sara Pirkle Hughes, including Rattle, Reed, Rosebud, TAB, Emrys, JuxtaProse, Review Americana, and Atticus Review, among others. She has also received writing fellowships from The Anderson Center, I-Park Foundation, and The Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences.
Sara earned a PhD in English from Georgia State University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Georgia College & State University. She is an Associate Director of Creative Writing at The University of Alabama.
