Sarah Manguso

Sarah Manguso is an acclaimed American poet, essayist, and memoirist. Her work has appeared in publications including The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, Tin House, and The London Review of Books.

Manguso was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1975. She studied at the University of Arizona and received her B.A. in English in 1998. She received her M.A. in English literature from New York University in 2001 and her MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College in 2004. After completing her education, she continued to write and teach at various schools, including Bard College and Oberlin College.

Manguso is the author of three collections of poetry and four works of nonfiction. Her first published work, The Two Kinds of Decay (2008), won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her second poetry collection, Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape (2016), was shortlisted for the National Book Award. Her other works include the novels The Captives (2010), The Guardians (2011), and Ongoingness: The End of a Diary (2015).

Manguso’s work has been praised for its emotional insight and poetic limning of the human experience. Her style is lyrical and often incorporates vivid imagery. She uses language to its fullest potential, creating meaningful connotations and bending it to her will even when it fails to meet convention.

Manguso’s nonfiction works explore the ephemeral nature of life and its unpredictable trajectory. In her memoir Ongoingness: The End Of A Diary, Manguso reflects on her decision to keep a diary for twenty-eight years. The book showcases her unique style of blending personal reflections with meditative prose as she explores the transformative power of writing and faith.

Manguso is a master at crafting stories out of fragments. In The Captives, she creates a story out of fragments of characters’ lives. The novel follows a group of people living in a secluded compound in the Arizona desert, with each chapter revolving around the lives of different characters. The Guardians weaves together the disparate yet interconnected lives of four women - three perfect strangers and one near-stranger - as they experience grief and love, and struggle to find healing.

Manguso’s writing has been admired for its candidness, emotional truth, and poetic beauty. Her works offer a profound understanding of the complexity of existence, inspiring readers to reflect upon their own lives. Manguso’s writing is honest, often humorous, and deeply moving. Her stories are infused with history and insight, exploring the complexity of existence through her characters’ journeys.