Sarah Bird's Profile Photo

Sarah Bird is the author of eight award-winning novels, including The Yokota Officers Club, Virgin of the Rodeo, The Mommy Club, and The Boyfriend School. Her most recent novel, The Gap Year, was named one of Library Journal’s Best Novels of the Year for 2011. Her ninth novel, A Princess Lily Girl, will be published by Alfred A. Knopf in the spring of 2014. Sarah was the holder of the Dobie-Paisano Fellowship in summer 2010, was inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame, and received a National Magazine Award nomination for her Texas Monthly columns. She has written screenplays for Warner Bros., CBS, TNT, the National Geographic Channel, Hallmark Features, and many independent producers and syndicated programs. She has been a contributor to the New York Times, Salon, Oprah magazine, the Daily Beast, Real Simple, Mademoiselle, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, and Texas Monthly. She and her husband, George Jones (not the dipsomaniacal C&W singer), make their empty nest in Austin with not-frequent-enough visits from son Gabriel.

51 Articles

Sarah Bird Excerpt Galveston Last Dance on the Starlight Pier
Books|
April 13, 2022

Galveston Vice

Organized crime! Illicit booze! The beach! In this exclusive excerpt from her new novel ‘Last Dance on the Starlight Pier,’ Sarah Bird explores Galveston at the end of the twenties, a setting she calls “a gift to a novelist.”

The Culture|
September 17, 2013

The Big Sleep

How I ended up spending my panel appearance at the Texas Book Festival lying on a bench and drooling on the floor.

Film & TV|
June 30, 2012

Meat, My Maker

When Dallas’s very own Marvin Lee Aday—that’s Meat Loaf to you—optioned one of my screenplays, he didn’t just offer me a glimpse of paradise by the dashboard lights. He also helped me write a novel.

Sarah Bird|
June 30, 2011

Sink or Swim

In an excerpt from Sarah Bird's new novel The Gap Year, a single mom prepares to send her only daughter off to college. Guess which one is a wreck.

Sarah Bird|
December 1, 2009

Hedda Garbler

Help! My voice recognition software is making me save airy funnel things witch nobody wonder Stans.

Sarah Bird|
October 31, 2009

One Angry Woman

Am I the only person who has always wanted to get picked for jury duty?

Sarah Bird|
September 30, 2009

Rats!

Turns out being a test subject for a dermatology research lab is not the best thing that could ever happen to a girl.

Sarah Bird|
July 31, 2009

Ranch Blessing

Or, how I stopped worrying and learned to love my formerly ugly, recently hip, linoleum-clad, mid-mod house.

Sarah Bird|
May 31, 2009

Ready, Set, Go-Go!

Every female on earth believes she can dance. My big break came when a Bob Hope wannabe with shiny suits and a pinkie ring took me on as his sidekick for a two-week tour of Tokyo.

Sarah Bird|
March 31, 2009

Hack Like Me

My trashy, sordid, steamy, decently paid turn as a writer for the pulps.

Sarah Bird|
February 1, 2009

Dishing

Eating high on the hog when you’re low on the totem pole.

Sarah Bird|
December 1, 2008

The Goodbye Boy

My only son is leaving for college, and I’m weeping through Mamma Mia! Lord help me.

Sarah Bird|
September 30, 2008

Hard Knocks

Introducing the Dean of Doors, in all his doorificence.

Books|
May 31, 2008

Desperate Housewives

In this excerpt from writer-at-large Sarah Bird’s new novel, How Perfect Is That, the realities of life in early twenty-first century Austin become all-too-clear to a defrocked socialite.

Sarah Bird|
June 30, 2007

Hog Wild

I subject myself to yet another seminal Texas experience: the hunt.

Sarah Bird|
February 1, 2007

Tour De Farce

The absurdity of the college visit (and why you should leave your kids at home).

Sarah Bird|
April 30, 2006

The Furs Were Flying

There is a world where the kings of small African countries send cases of Dom Pérignon as hostess gifts, where you get to choose between the white-striped chinchilla and the violet beaver shearling poncho. Who let me in?

Sarah Bird|
April 1, 2006

Buy, Buy, Birdie

Ladies’ fashion is nothing if not a fantasy inside an illusion wrapped in a thong. Every season, there is a new “look,” a new “trend,” a new “paranoid schizophrenic thought disorder.” And then there are returns.

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