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Sara Lindsay Rath
Manawa, WI Born: 1941 Link to Author's Website Listen to Larry Meiller's interview with Rath about her novel The Waters of Star Lake |
Biography:
Sara Rath is the author of The Complete Cow, About Cows, two other non-fiction books, one novel, and four volumes of poetry. She also writes short stories, non-fiction articles, radio scripts, and screenplays for public TV and film. The granddaughter of a prizewinning cheesemaker, Sara has been heavily influenced by the rural landscape, as evidenced in her writing. She and her husband live in Elm Grove, Wisconsin.
Rath began writing stories, plays and poems when she was still in grade school. She wrote the plays because she could cast herself in the starring role.
In college Rath studied English and journalism, but when she began publishing, poetry was her first love. Reviewers characterized her poems as possessing "an appealing toughness, sensitivity, and sensibility. They also offer a clear articulation of what being a fully sentient woman means in our present world." Of her collection, Dancing With a Cowboy 1991, Poet Ron Wallace said, "Over the years her poetry has become increasingly denser and richer, and it now ranks with that of some of our best poets..." Utah poet and writer Edward Lueders says "She's good, and she's getting better all the time. Her poems have nerve as well as music."
Rath was recognized in 1984 with the Wisconsin Library Association's Banta Award for her poetry collection, Remembering the Wilderness.
She has been named a MacDowell Fellow, received a Fellowship to the Ucross Foundation, and in 1994 was awarded a Wisconsin Arts Board Individual Artist's Fellowship to write Star Lake Saloon and Housekeeping Cottages.
Her television documentary, Views of a Cameraman, was recognized with a silver medal by the New York International Film & Television Festival and the Chicago International Film Festival issued an Award of Merit for her mystery/drama, Annzinetta. She received an Award of Merit from The State Historical Society of Wisconsin for her initial biography of the 19th century landscape photographer, Henry Hamilton Bennett.
During the 1980s, Rath taught writing classes for the University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension, the Rhinelander School of the Arts, and was on the faculty of the Goddard College MFA in Writing Program from 1991 through 1994. She has frequently been invited to be a workshop-leader and lecturer at the Writer's Center in Chautauqua, NY.
From 2006 to the present time Rath has restricted her teaching to a week every autumn at The Clearing, a folk school in Ellison Bay, Door County, Wisconsin. She accepts only 10 students and the class fills up quickly.
(From the author's webpage and Google information)
Works by Sara Rath:
Poetry Collections
Sara Rath is the author of The Complete Cow, About Cows, two other non-fiction books, one novel, and four volumes of poetry. She also writes short stories, non-fiction articles, radio scripts, and screenplays for public TV and film. The granddaughter of a prizewinning cheesemaker, Sara has been heavily influenced by the rural landscape, as evidenced in her writing. She and her husband live in Elm Grove, Wisconsin.
Rath began writing stories, plays and poems when she was still in grade school. She wrote the plays because she could cast herself in the starring role.
In college Rath studied English and journalism, but when she began publishing, poetry was her first love. Reviewers characterized her poems as possessing "an appealing toughness, sensitivity, and sensibility. They also offer a clear articulation of what being a fully sentient woman means in our present world." Of her collection, Dancing With a Cowboy 1991, Poet Ron Wallace said, "Over the years her poetry has become increasingly denser and richer, and it now ranks with that of some of our best poets..." Utah poet and writer Edward Lueders says "She's good, and she's getting better all the time. Her poems have nerve as well as music."
Rath was recognized in 1984 with the Wisconsin Library Association's Banta Award for her poetry collection, Remembering the Wilderness.
She has been named a MacDowell Fellow, received a Fellowship to the Ucross Foundation, and in 1994 was awarded a Wisconsin Arts Board Individual Artist's Fellowship to write Star Lake Saloon and Housekeeping Cottages.
Her television documentary, Views of a Cameraman, was recognized with a silver medal by the New York International Film & Television Festival and the Chicago International Film Festival issued an Award of Merit for her mystery/drama, Annzinetta. She received an Award of Merit from The State Historical Society of Wisconsin for her initial biography of the 19th century landscape photographer, Henry Hamilton Bennett.
During the 1980s, Rath taught writing classes for the University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension, the Rhinelander School of the Arts, and was on the faculty of the Goddard College MFA in Writing Program from 1991 through 1994. She has frequently been invited to be a workshop-leader and lecturer at the Writer's Center in Chautauqua, NY.
From 2006 to the present time Rath has restricted her teaching to a week every autumn at The Clearing, a folk school in Ellison Bay, Door County, Wisconsin. She accepts only 10 students and the class fills up quickly.
(From the author's webpage and Google information)
Works by Sara Rath:
- Seven Years of Grace: The Inspired Mission of Achsa Sprague
- The Waters of Star Lake, a novel
- H. H. Bennett, Photographer: His American Landscape
- Night Sisters, a novel
- Star Lake Saloon and Housekeeping Cottages: a novel
- The Complete Pig
- The Complete Cow
- About Cows
- Early works: Pioneer Photographer; Easy Going Guide to Madison & Dane County
Poetry Collections
- Dancing With a Cowboy, Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters (1991) -- Fourth collection of poems, praised by critics for "sensory and sensual exuberance...clarity, intensity and accessibility."
- Remembering the Wilderness, Northword Press (1984). Named the 1984 Banta Award Book by the Wisconsin Library Association for the finest literary achievement of the year by a Wisconsin author.
- The Cosmic Virgin, Wisconsin House (1973) - Poems
- Whatever Happened to Fats Domino, & Other Poems, Wisconsin House (1971)
