Meet The Authors

Sarah Crichton

Sarah.Crichton@fsgbooks.com

Sarah Crichton is Vice President and Publisher of Sarah Crichton Books, an imprint of Farrar, Straus and Giroux which began publishing titles in March 2006. An eclectic mix of smart and vervy books, fiction and nonfiction both, the imprint has already had marked success with Ishmael Beah's bestselling memoir, A LONG WAY GONE: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, which reached Number One on the New York Times Bestseller list, and also made bookselling history when it was heavily promoted by Starbucks in stores around the U.S. and U.K. As of April 2008, A LONG WAY GONE has been sold to 32 countries.

Other notable books from the imprint's first year are: THE JANISSARY TREE by Jason Goodwin, which won the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award for the Best Novel of 2006, and Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's award-winning love letter to the Kalahari Bushmen, THE OLD WAY: A Story of the First People. Some recent books she has published include Eric Wilson's AGAINST HAPPINESS, a small but powerful book in favor of the art- and life-enriching power of melancholy; Melody Petersen's OUR DAILY MEDS, a scathing investigation of corruption in the pharmaceutical industry; and Vanity Fair Writer at Large Marie Brenner's APPLES AND ORANGES, a memoir of her tumultuous but loving relationship with her brother Carl, as he is dying from cancer.

Crichton was Mariane Pearl's coauthor of A MIGHTY HEART: The Brave Life and Death of Danny Pearl (Scribner), published in 2003. Crichton also co-authored the architect Daniel Libeskind's memoir, BREAKING GROUND (Riverhead), among other books.

From 1996 to 2001, Crichton was vice president and publisher of Little, Brown, where she had the good fortune to sign up Alice Sebold's THE LOVELY BONES and Malcolm Gladwell's THE TIPPING POINT. She published David Sedaris, George Stephanopoulos, David Foster Wallace, George Pelecanos, Anita Shreve, Rick Moody, and Michael Connelly. In 2000, the house boasted an unprecedented three Oprah Book Club selections over a four-month period.

Before Little, Brown, Crichton was in magazines. At Newsweek magazine, where she started in 1988, she was one of the top editors (a "Wallenda," as they are called in-house) responsible for the Back of the Book'all cultural, lifestyle, society and business coverage. Before Newsweek, she was the Editor of Seventeen magazine, as well as a widely-published freelance journalist, and a struggling chanteuse. She graduated from Harvard/Radcliffe in 1975 and lives in Brooklyn with her husband, writer Guy Martin, and their 18-year-old daughter, Eliza. Crichton will appear on the panel: "Publishing from the Ground Up" at 1:00 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 20th at the Nicolaysen Art Museum.