© D.R. Cowles

Born in New York City to Canadian parents, Robyn Sarah has lived for most of her life in Montreal.  Her poetry began appearing in Canadian literary magazines in the early 1970s, while she completed studies at McGill University and the Conservatoire de Musique du Québec. In 1976, with Fred Louder, she co-founded Villeneuve Publications and co-edited its poetry chapbook series which included first titles by August Kleinzahler, A.F. Moritz, Bruce Taylor, and others. The press folded in 1987. During the same years and until 1996, she taught English at Champlain Regional College.  The author of several poetry collections, two collections of short stories, and a book of essays on poetry, she has published widely in Canadian and American journals. A selection of her poems in French translation, Le tamis des jours, was published in Montreal in 2007.  Her poems have been anthologized in Fifteen Canadian Poets x 2 and x3, Passeport: La Poésie Moderne de Langue Anglaise au Canada, The Bedford Introduction to Literature, The Norton Anthology of Poetry, in Garrison Keillor's Good Poems for Hard Times, and in Best Canadian Poems in English (2009).  Her most recent book publication is a new poetry collection, Pause for Breath (2009).