Sarah Elizabeth Schantz grew up in a bookstore and is an accomplished short-storyist, with many awards under her belt. Schantz holds an MFA in Writing & Poetics from Naropa University. She currently lives with her family in a Victorian-era farmhouse on the outskirts of Boulder, Colorado where they are surrounded by open sky, century-old cottonwoods, coyote, and screech owls. Fig is her first novel and was selected by NPR in 2015 as A Best Read of the Year before winning the 2016 Colorado Book Award. Her short fiction, and the occasional poem or essay, have been published in such literary journals and anthologies such as the Los Angeles Review, Third Coast, Best New Stories from the Midwest, Midwestern Gothic, Bombay Gin, Modern Grimmoire and Hunger Mountain (among many others); in additon to winning several short story contests, she has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize twice. Her chapbook Down in the Water is available from Gesture Press.

 

Schantz collects Edwardian-style nightgowns (which she both wears to sleep in and to write); owl and swan figurines, Lotus slippers, Blue Willow, doilies, old lace, owl pellets, bones, and dolls.

 

She would be lost without fairy tales. Her favorites include: "Little Red Riding Hood," "Snow White," The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan. She worships at the altar of Angela Carter and swoons to read the critical texts of Jack Zipes.

 

Sarah started her own seasonally-inspired small creative writing workshop series titled, (W)rites of Passage. For more information about her workshops, please visit www.WritesofPassage.org.

 

She is also a visual artist, only under a slightly different name: Sarah Elizabeth Taz Schantz. For more information regarding the name "Taz" please read her blog post titled, "Namesake." If you're interested in seeing or purchasing her artwork, you can click on the following link and sail through cyber space until you land in her etsy shop, Anangka Arts: www.AnangkaArts.Etsy.com