Sarah Kay

Sarah Kay (born June 19, 1988) is an American poet best known for spoken word performances built on direct address, emotional precision and a conversational cadence that made her accessible far beyond the slam poetry scene where she started. Raised in New York City, she began performing as a teenager at the Bowery Poetry Club and rose to wider recognition after a 2011 TED talk built around her poem «If I Should Have a Daughter», which became one of the most-watched TED talks of its era.

In 2004 she co-founded Project VOICE, an organization that brings spoken word poetry into classrooms as a tool for education and self-expression, and she has spent much of her career touring schools and stages together with fellow poet Phil Kaye. Her writing favors intimate, narrative-driven imagery over abstraction, often returning to themes of family, memory and growing up.

Kay has published several collections, including B (2011) and No Matter the Wreckage (2014), both illustrated by Sophia Janowitz, along with a standalone illustrated edition of «The Type» (2016). Poems such as «Postcards», «Hands» and «Toothbrush to the Bicycle Tire» remain staples of her live sets and helped define a wave of spoken word poets who found audiences online as much as on stage.