Sarah Domet

Sarah Domet is an American novelist, short fiction writer, essayist, and creative writing professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she coordinates the MFA program in creative writing. Originally from Ohio, she holds an M.A. in English literature and a Ph.D. in comparative literature and creative writing from the University of Cincinnati, where she served on the editorial staff of The Cincinnati Review and won the Charles Phelps Taft Dissertation and Research Fellowship. Before her current post at UNCW she taught for many years in the Department of Writing and Linguistics at Georgia Southern University.

Her debut novel The Guineveres (Flatiron Books / Macmillan, 2016) follows four girls all named Guinevere who meet at a Catholic boarding school run by nuns. It received starred reviews from Booklist and Library Journal, was praised by O: The Oprah Magazine, People, Elle, Real Simple, Harper's Bazaar, and The New York Times Book Review, was voted one of the Best Books of 2016 by Southern Authors by Southern Living, and was included on Bustle's 2016 best debut novels list. Her second novel Everything Lost Returns is forthcoming from Flatiron Books in February 2026.

Her writing-craft book 90 Days to Your Novel: A Day-by-Day Plan for Outlining and Writing Your Book (Writer's Digest, 2010) opens from the working observation that novel writing is not about inspiration but about time, energy, and discipline (Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying in six weeks; Stephen King believes a first draft should take no more than three months). It works in three twenty-one-day phases (brainstorming and outlining, drafting, and revision) with a daily writing assignment for the working writer who can commit two to three hours a day for twelve weeks. She is also the recipient of the 2022 Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers' Conference.

Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Quarterly West, New Delta Review, The Cincinnati Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, Potomac Review, Harpur Palate, Many Mountains Moving, Talking Writing, and Ohio Valley History, and have won the Hatfield/Westheimer Short Story Prize and the New York State Summer Writers Institute Scholarship. Her writing-life articles have appeared in Writer's Digest magazine.