Welcome to my online home!
This is my website and personal magazine, which is basically an ever-growing anthology of my work.
All my writing in some way questions what society says will make us happy and discover what actually does. Each year, I do something a little different (my version of Taylor Swift’s eras).
As a paid subscriber, you receive
Access to my second memoir Cured—a year-long account of my recovery from serious mental illness and investigation into the history of mental health recovery
The 🎧 audiobook narration of Cured on the Substack app or Spotify
My monthly column delivered to your inbox
This year it’s Less of More and More—for those who want a little less in a culture of too much
The full anthology of my work, including
Start with a Question, where we question what we believe to be true about being human in today’s fast-paced world
Exclusive interviews with experts on mental health recovery—including Tom Insel (former head of the NIMH) and Dr. Chyrell Bellamy (Director of Yale's Program for Recovery and Community Health)
Amazing interviews with others who’ve recovered from mental illness
Thank you for supporting my work. As a writer, I need readers who will help me continue to bring my writing to the world.
Your annual support ($30) is about the price of a hardcover book each year.
If you don’t know me, I’m an award-winning author, educator, activist, and entrepreneur. I’m an author at HarperCollins, on the creative writing faculty at Northwestern University, a freelance writer at The New York Times and elsewhere, a certified mental health peer recovery support specialist (PRSS), and a mental health keynote speaker who’s spoken to audiences across the country about recovery from mental illness. I’m also a Substack Growth Strategist and the founder and director of Substack Writers at Work.
My debut memoir Pathological: The True Story of Six Misdiagnoses (HarperCollins) was an Amazon bestseller, an Apple Best Books pick, and hailed by The New York Times as a “fiery manifesto of a memoir…bristling with spikey intelligence.” It was featured on NPR, Oprah Daily, Salon, Forbes, The Los Angeles Times, and more.
The highly anticipated sequel Cured is a bestselling Featured Publication on Substack.
I write for many publications, including The New York Times, The New Republic, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, Time Magazine, and The Paris Review, where I was an advisory editor. As a writer, Sarah’s writing appears in many publications, including The New York Times, The Atlantic, Time, and The Paris Review, where she was an advisory editor. My essays have received Notable Mention in Best American Essays and Pushcart Prize nominations. I’m the recipient of the Hopwood Award for Literature and fellowships from Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, among others.
I live in Chicago with my two beloved cats, Baby Theo and Sweets. They were instrumental in my recovery. More than anything, I want a t-shirt that says, Ask me about my cats.
Contact:
Publicity, Sarah Schoof, HarperCollins Publishers | Sarah.Schoof@harpercollins.com
Literary agent, Kim Witherspoon, Inkwell Management | Kimberly@inkwellmanagement.com
Speaking agent, Washington Speaker’s Bureau | (833.972.8255)
Direct, mssarahfay1516 [at] gmail.com
What people are saying:
“Sarah Fay’s artful work is pleasingly unclassifiable—masterfully written, distinctively researched, and deeply humane. I’ll just call it genius.” —Anthony Swofford, International and New York Times bestselling author of Jarhead
“Sarah Fay is a deeply compelling person and a fantastic writer. We were wowed by her talent for bolstering personal stories with takeaways backed up with careful research.” —Apple Best Books Pick, Pathological
“Sarah Fay creates a work of art that entertains as much as it informs. The prose is so electric, incisive, witty, irreverent, devastating, sparkling! Fay has created a masterpiece that is a true original on every level.” —Porochista Khakpour, award-winning author of Sick
“Sarah Fay shows how our attempts to order the universe and our minds has caused at least as much harm as good.” —DT Max, staff writer at The New Yorker and author of The Family That Couldn’t Sleep
“Sarah Fay’s talent for empathetic, but un-sugarcoated language and her passion for patient-led recovery makes her posts compelling and thought-provoking.” —Neva Kares Talladen, The Other Worldly Dispatch
Join my Substack community!
This is more than a newsletter; it’s a magazine of my work, full access to my second memoir Cured, and a community of people asking the same question, What if we questioned society’s wellness formula and created our own?
The annual subscription of $30/year (about the price of a hardcover book) gives you
Exclusive access to Cured: The Memoir—The highly anticipated sequel to Pathological: The True Story of Six Misdiagnoses (HarperCollins), Cured combines memoir and investigative journalism to challenge mental illness narratives
The 🎧 audiobook narration on the Substack app or on Spotify—hear my powerful story in my own voice
My monthly columns and community threads where we consider what society says will make us happy and what really does
Start with a Question, where we question what we believe to be true about being human in today’s fast-paced world
Less of More and More—for those who want a little less in a culture of too much
The full archive of my work
