Sarah Smarsh is a journalist who has covered socioeconomic class, politics and public policy for The New York Times, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Harper’s and many other publications. Her first book, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth (Scribner, 2018), was an instant New York Times bestseller, a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Chicago Tribune Literary Award. Smarsh’s second book, She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs (Scribner, 2020), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
A former Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and former writing professor, Smarsh is a frequent speaker and commentator on economic inequality. She lives in Kansas.