Bio
Sara Michas-Martin is a poet and nonfiction writer who draws inspiration from science and the natural world. Specific teaching interests include ecopoetics, environmental humanities, science communication and hybrid forms.
Her book, Gray Matter, winner of the Poets Out Loud Prize and nominated for the Colorado Book Award, is a creative investigation of the relationship between biology, the brain and one’s conscious understanding of a self. Current projects include a nonfiction manuscript (Black Boxes) that draws on medical, cultural and natural history to consider how the logic of the maternal body corresponds, or is in tension with, current ecological and social systems. Fire Season, a poetry manuscript, takes on deep ecology and the ethics of care in a moment of environmental precarity.
Sara holds a BFA in visual art from the University of Michigan and an MFA in poetry from the University of Arizona. Her work has been supported by a Wallace Stegner fellowship, grants from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for Women, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg prize, as well as fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Arts, Marble House Project, and the Bread Loaf and Community of Writers' conferences.
She received notable essay mentions in the 2023 Best American Nonfiction Essays and the 2023 Best American Science and Nature Writing anthologies. Recent poems and essays have been nominated for the Pushcart prize and published in the American Poetry Review, The Believer, Crazyhorse, The Glacier, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the New England Review, Harvard Review, Kenyon Review, Terrain.org and elsewhere. She lives in the mountains with her family east of Monterey Bay.
Academic Appointments
-
Lecturer, Creative Writing
2024-25 Courses
- Creative Writing & Science: The Artful Interpreter
ENGLISH 91AI, OCEANS 157H, OCEANS 257H (Win) - Inspired By Science: A Writing Workshop
ENGLISH 9CI (Aut, Spr) -
Independent Studies (1)
- Individual Work
ENGLISH 198 (Aut, Win, Spr, Sum)
- Individual Work
-
Prior Year Courses
2023-24 Courses
- Creative Writing & Science: The Artful Interpreter
ENGLISH 91AI, OCEANS 157H, OCEANS 257H (Win) - Inspired By Science: A Writing Workshop
ENGLISH 9CI (Aut, Spr)
2022-23 Courses
- Creative Writing & Science: The Artful Interpreter
ENGLISH 157H, OCEANS 157 (Win) - Environmental Humanities: Finding Our Place on a Changing Planet
BIO 184, ENGLISH 140D, SUSTAIN 140 (Aut) - Inspired By Science: A Writing Workshop
ENGLISH 9CI (Spr) - Literature of the Anthropocene
ENGLISH 157D (Aut)
2021-22 Courses
- Creative Writing & Science: The Artful Interpreter
BIOHOPK 157H, ENGLISH 157H (Win) - Inspired By Science: A Writing Workshop
ENGLISH 9CI (Aut) - Literature of the Anthropocene
ENGLISH 157D (Spr)
- Creative Writing & Science: The Artful Interpreter
All Publications
-
Black Boxes
New England Review
2022; 43 (1): 10-25
View details for DOI 10.1353/ner.2022.0002
- Gray Matter Fordham University Press. 2014
- 5 Poems The Glacier 2024
- Expecting Again The Courtland Review 2024
- "Influencers" Conduit 2024
- Wake Up or Get Out American Poetry Review 2023; 52 (5): Page34-34
- A Meeting American Poetry Review 2023; 52 (5): p34-34
-
Transfigured in the Underground.
JAMA
2022; 327 (14): 1405
View details for DOI 10.1001/jama.2022.0863
View details for PubMedID 35412562
- Possible Poetry Northwest 2022; Published on January 31, 2022
-
Black Boxes
NEW ENGLAND REVIEW-MIDDLEBURY SERIES
2022; 43 (1): 10-25
View details for Web of Science ID 000778625700003
-
Visibly Pregnant
KENYON REVIEW
2021; 43 (4): 73
View details for Web of Science ID 000672548700016
-
2020
AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW
2021; 50 (3): 27
View details for Web of Science ID 000644955400018
-
Blue Hours
AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW
2021; 50 (3): 27
View details for Web of Science ID 000644955400020
-
Bubble
AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW
2021; 50 (3): 27
View details for Web of Science ID 000644955400017
-
Nest
AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW
2021; 50 (3): 27
View details for Web of Science ID 000644955400021
-
He Says Cool Dress
AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW
2021; 50 (3): 27
View details for Web of Science ID 000644955400019
- Is it Real CRAZYHORSE 2021; 99 (SPRING): 74
- Thieves & Magicians CRAZYHORSE 2021; 99 (SPRING): 74
-
First October, Aspens
AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW
2019; 48 (2): 18
View details for Web of Science ID 000459365400020
-
With Toddler
AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW
2019; 48 (2): 18
View details for Web of Science ID 000459365400019
-
Middle Life
AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW
2019; 48 (2): 18
View details for Web of Science ID 000459365400018
- Also Born KENYON REVIEW ONLINE 2018; MAY/JUNE