Sandi Sonnenfeld

Sandi Sonnenfeld was born in Queens, New York and grew up on Long Island. Drawn to the arts at a very early age, Sonnenfeld studied ballet for more than 15 years, ultimately attending classes at the Joffrey Ballet School in Manhattan. She attended Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, where she majored in English (and minored in dance), graduating magna cum laude. After a brief stint performing with a professional dance troupe in Boston, Sonnenfeld took a position as an editorial assistant with a local publishing company. In 1987, Sonnenfeld enrolled in the MFA program in fiction writing at the University of Washington, where she studied under National Book Award winner Charles Johnson. While at the UW, Sandi was awarded the Loren D. Milliman Writing Fellowship, the top scholarship given to only one writing student each year. Since that time, Sonnenfeld has published more than 30 short stories, essays, and journalism pieces in a variety of publications.

Her first full-length book, This Is How I Speak, a memoir in diary form that explores Sonnenfeld’s struggle to come to terms with the end of her dance career even as she embarks on a new one as a writer, was published by Seattle’s Impassio Press in June 2002. This is How I Speak was a BookSense 76 finalist for July/August 2002.

Writing awards include The David Dornstein Memorial Creative Writing Award for Young Writers (1998) sponsored by the Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education, as well as a finalist for Rosebud Magazine’s X.J. Kennedy Award for Creative Nonfiction (2001), Greensboro Review Literary Awards (2001) and the Serpentine Fiction Award (2000). Sonnenfeld is also a 2002 Celebration Author, one of a select group of Northwest writers that the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association believes merits special notice.

Whether writing from the imagination or drawing on true life experiences, Sonnenfeld’s work is profoundly literary, with a strong emphasis on character development and theme. Her work tends to explore urban situations, where different cultures collide or characters experience deep isolation in the midst of chaos. Her stories and essays deal with a wide variety of themes and issues, including the AIDS crisis, racism, adultery, women’s friendships, and sexual violence.

A founding member and past president of PEN Washington, the Seattle chapter of PEN USA, Sonnenfeld is also a member of the Authors Guild and the ACLU. She currently resides in Brooklyn, NY with her husband Warren Berry.

Creative Nonfiction editor Lee Gutkind says of her work, “Sonnenfeld captures the pressures and delights in the worlds of dance and literature in ways that are delicate, insightful and continuously illuminating.”