SARA RATH is a versatile, award-winning author with over a dozen books in a variety of genres, including four volumes of poetry, seven nonfiction books (including three biographies) and is currently writing her third novel. Critics have said she has a “wicked sense of humor,” and her work is sometimes “laugh out loud funny.” The New York Times Book Review said The Complete Pig, published May, 2000 (paperback ed. 2004), “contains enough eccentric pig lore to leave the browser giddy with pleasure.
2010 saw the publication of H. H. Bennett, Photographer: His American Landscape, Sara’s biography of the legendary 19th century photographer from Wisconsin Dells. Her novels have been featured on the popular Wisconsin Public Radio program, “Chapter a Day.” Her newest title is The Waters of Star Lake, a sequel to her bestselling first novel, Star Lake Saloon and Housekeeping Cottages was just released in 2012 . Her second novel, Night Sisters, has been described as “a light-hearted novel narrated by a Madison woman whose flirtation with Spiritualism results in an encounter with a mischievous spirit and eerie reflections upon the unresolved death of a childhood friend…” Much of the story takes place at the fictional “Wocanaga,” which closely resembles the Wonewoc Spiritual Camp in western Wisconsin.
Sara was born in Manawa, a small town in central Wisconsin, but now resides outside Spring Green with her husband, two Maine coon cats, and a chocolate labrador named Sadie. She is serving her third term as the president of the Friends of the Spring Green Library. Each year she teaches a fiction-writing workshop at The Clearing in Door County. She has been a MacDowell Fellow, a resident at The Ucross Foundation, and her numerous awards include a Wisconsin Arts Board Individual Artist Grant for her work in fiction. The Wisconsin Library Association presented her with The Banta Award for her poetry. She holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College.