Community engagement and social justice
Literary arts, including poetry, creative writing, fiction, and nonfiction
Live performance, including puppetry, theater, dance, music, etc.
Pittsburgh Creative Corps Artist Directory
Sarah Shotland
Primary Discipline
Artistic Practice
Creative writing, including poetry, fiction, nonfiction
Excerpt from “Flatten, Clean,” short story published in The Iowa Review, 2020. Click on text to read full story.
Abolition is Everything, 2021, art book. Participatory creative nonfiction set including a deck of 50 cards representing the prison system in each state; 50 writing prompts that encourage readers to correspond with incarcerated people; 50 pre-addressed envelopes to incarcerated people who’ve requested letters; and three chapbooks.
Excerpt from “How to Disappear,” short story published in Lunch Ticket, 2017. Click on text to read full story.
Dear Claire, ongoing, postcards, 5″ x 8.” Self-addressed postcards included with novel, inviting readers to write a postcard to the main character, Claire Cunningham.
Excerpt from “What We Wear to Prison,” essay published in The Baltimore Review, 2018. Click on text to read full story.
About the Artist
Sarah Shotland is the author of the novel Junkette (2014) and the nonfiction work Abolition is Everything (2021). Her work has been published in the Iowa Review, North American Review, Ploughshares, Gulfstream, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere. She’s the recipient of grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Heinz Endowments, the Pittsburgh Foundation, SFAI, and Smith College’s Special Libraries. She writes fiction, nonfiction, and plays, and facilitates hundreds of writing workshops a year. She has worked with writers of all ages in spaces ranging from hospitals, drug treatment centers, corporate retreats, college campuses, museums, jails, prisons, shelters, and summer camps. She especially appreciates collaborating with other artists, and has worked with dancers, visual artists, and musicians to create immersive works that incorporate storytelling and language into their artistic practices. She currently serves as the Chair of the Art, Communications, and English department at Carlow University where she also directs the Madwomen in the Attic.
Photo by Heather Mull
Web
Accreditations, Certifications, and/or Awards
- emcArts fellowship, 2019
Provides Fabrication Services to Other Artists
No
Teaching Artist
Yes, ages 5 and up
Joined the Directory
July 2026
Related
PROJECT
Pittsburgh Creative Corps
Designed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Pittsburgh Creative Corps initiative engages artists and creative workers to activate the public realm while providing economic opportunity.
“Working in the public realm invites the public into the writer's world, but it also insists that the writer be a part of the world, rather than apart from the world. In my own work, that's meant more generation, inspiration, and surprise.”
Sarah Shotland
Contact the Artist
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Related
PROJECT
Pittsburgh Creative Corps
Designed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Pittsburgh Creative Corps initiative engages artists and creative workers to activate the public realm while providing economic opportunity.
