Sarah Clawson Willis is an author, educator, and story coach who writes books for children, teens, and occasionally adults. Her middle grade graphic novels, Band Nerd and Stage Fright are forthcoming in 2025 and 2026 from HarperAlley.  She has also published short fiction under the penname Clara Sawson in The Louisville Review.

Before she started writing, Sarah was a HUGE band nerd. She played flute and piccolo in bands and orchestras of all sorts in middle school, high school, college, and community bands. She has never been first chair flute, finding instead that piccolo was a better fit (small but mighty!).

Sarah can usually be found working, as that is her happy place. In spite of several years as a middle school Latin teacher, she is still the opposite of cool, spending the majority of her time with imaginary people, dead languages, and/or chickens. She is forever grateful that her people put up with her anyway.

She enjoys school a little too much, having earned degrees in political science and teaching Latin before earning a MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She lives in the Triangle area of North Carolina with her husband, daughters, niece, cats, and a bunch of chickens all named Betty.

Photo credit: Dancing Lemur Photography