ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sarah Smarsh is a journalist who has reported for the New York Times, Harper’s, the Guardian, and many other publications. Her first book, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth, was an instant New York Times bestseller, a finalist for the National Book Award and the Kirkus Prize, the winner of the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize, and a best-books-of-the-year selection by President Barack Obama. Her 2020 book, She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Smarsh is a frequent political commentator and speaker on socioeconomic class. A former writing professor, Smarsh has served as a Shorenstein Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Pritzker Fellow at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics.
Smarsh’s next book, about the endangered tallgrass prairie ecosystem, will be published by Scribner in 2026. She lives in rural Kansas.
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