Photo credit David Green

Sarah Barnsley is a writer, researcher, lecturer and academic leader, with interests in poetry, creativity, health/medical humanities, and mental health advocacy and activism.  She is also Contributing Editor to The Understory Conversation, an online hub for creatives.

Sarah was a winner in the Poetry Society Members’ Poems Competition (Spring 2021, Autumn 2018), shortlisted (2018) and longlisted (2020) in the Live Canon Poetry Competition, shortlisted in the Bridport Prize (2018, 2010) and joint runner-up in the Poetry School/Pighog Pamphlet Competition (2014).

Sarah’s collection, The Thoughts, was published by Smith|Doorstop in January 2022. Other publications include a pamphlet, The Fire Station (Telltale Press, 2015), co-editorship (with Robin Houghton and Peter Kenny) of Truths: A Telltale Press Anthology (Telltale Press, 2018) and a selection of literary criticism, including Mary Barnard, American Imagist (SUNY Press, 2013), which followed a a research grant as H.D. Visiting Fellow at the Beinecke Library, Yale University, and won special commendation in  The Year’s Work in English Studies. A companion piece – an edited book, Mary Barnard’s Complete Poems and Selected Translations, supported by Barnard’s literary executor and funding from the British Association of American Studies – is forthcoming in June 2025, also with SUNY Press.

Read an excerpt from The Thoughts here.

Read an essay in The Lancet Psychiatry here.

Read an excerpt from Mary Barnard, American Imagist here.

Read some of Sarah’s poems here.

To find out about readings and festival appearances go here.