Sara M Saleh is an award winning writer, poet of Palestinian, Egyptian, and Lebanese heritage, who has shared her work on stages from Brooklyn to Bangalore. Her work has been published in English and Arabic across dozens of literary platforms including Haymarket anthologies and the Guardian, and explores the experiences of Arab-Muslim women navigating faith, family, and cultural expectations amid dispossession and displacement.

Sara’s debut novel Songs For The Dead And The Living (Affirm Press, 2023) was shortlisted for the US Khairallah Prize for Literature and the Multicultural NSW Award at the NSW Premier's Literary Award, and co-won the Australian Society of Author’s Barbara Jefferis Award 2024.

She made history as the first poet to win both the Australian Book Review's 2021 Peter Porter Poetry Prize and the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize 2020. Her full-length poetry collection The Flirtation of Girls / Ghazal el-Banat (UQP, 2023) won the 2023 Anne Elder Award and was shortlisted for the 2024 Five Islands Poetry Prize, the ALS Gold Medal, and the ALS Mary Gilmore Award.

Sara made history in Australia as the first poet to win both the prestigious Peter Porter and the Judith Wright Poetry Prizes (2020-21). Sara is also celebrated for her work co-editing the groundbreaking anthology, Arab, Australian, Other (Picador, 2019). She is the recipient of the inaugural Affirm fellowship for Sweatshop writers, Nelima Sidney travel grant, Varuna writers residency, and Amant New York writers residency, among many other honours and accolades, reflecting her growing influence in the literary field.

Her poems, short stories and essays have been published widely in both English and Arabic languages, nationally and worldwide, including the Australian Poetry Journal, Overland, Meanjin, Cordite Poetry Reviews, Red Room, Kill your Darlings, Rabbit Poetry Journal and SBS among others. Her publications are also portrayed in anthologies such as the Sweatshop Women’s Anthology: Volume II, Racism, Making Mirrors, Solid Air, A Blade of Grass, Groundswell: The Best of Australian Poetry, Borderless: A Transnational Anthology of feminist poetry, and Another Australia.

Rooted in the belief that literacy is a tool for liberation, Sara has rallied communities of artists across continents to create sustainable, generative, and inclusive spaces for craft, connection, and critical consciousness. From co-founding the Muslim Poetry Project to leading workshops in countless classrooms, community spaces, and festivals around the world, Sara has uplifted thousands of (SWANA) storytellers in a predominantly Eurocentric culture.