ABOUT
Sarah Martin is a Melbourne-based Australian writer whose work ranges from children’s picture books and contemporary literary fiction to biographies and histories. She writes with a quiet attentiveness to the moments that shape us; the conversations that linger, the places that leave their mark, and the fragile, often beautiful connections between people and the natural world.
Sarah’s path to writing has been shaped by both scholarship and lived experience. She began her professional life as a teacher of French, English, and History, a background that sharpened her sensitivity to language, structure, and voice. She later worked in marketing and development at Ormond College at the University of Melbourne, before completing a PhD in History and turning her attention to biography. These experiences deepened her respect for research, careful editing, and the discipline required to tell complex stories with clarity and restraint.
Her writing reflects a long-standing fascination with how identity is formed, particularly within families and across generations. Many of Sarah’s novels centre on characters at points of transition: moments of leaving, returning, grieving, or beginning again. Rather than dramatic gestures, Sarah is drawn to small turning points; the quiet decisions and recognitions that gently alter the course of a life.
Travel has also played a formative role in her work. A year living in France inspired her first novel, while extended journeys through northern Australia, including time spent in remote communities and along the Savannah Way, opened up landscapes, relationships, and questions that continue to surface across her fiction. These experiences have given her writing a strong sense of place, grounded in observation rather than romanticism.
In her children’s books, Sarah brings many of these same concerns to younger readers, often through stories of interdependence in nature. Animals, birds, and environments rely on one another in ways that mirror human relationships, and she delights in translating complex ideas into stories that are playful, thoughtful, and made to be shared aloud.
Married to an architect for over five decades, Sarah is a mother of two and grandmother of four. She finds inspiration in everyday moments; a child’s unexpected question, a chance encounter, a small act of kindness, and brings to her writing a light, dry humour alongside emotional honesty. Across all genres, her stories are tender without sentimentality, clear-eyed without cynicism, and quietly hopeful. She hopes readers, young and old, close the final page with a deeper attentiveness to themselves, to others, and to the world they inhabit.
Watch the Azita and Me interview with Sarah Martin, English teacher Katrina Renard, as well as young readers Radha Tiedgen and Charlotte Berryman. Hear about Sarah's motivations for writing the book, her creative process and what she hopes year 7 students in particular will take away from the story. View now on YouTube
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