Photo by Emma L. Young Photography

Sarah Jean Horwitz was raised in suburban New Jersey, where she lived next door to a cemetery and down the street from an abandoned fairy tale theme park, which probably explains a lot. Her love of storytelling grew from listening to her mother’s original “fractured” fairy tales, a childhood spent in community theater, and far too many rereads of her favorite fantasy books.

Sarah Jean first fell in love with writing when she took a short screenwriting class as a film production student in college. Naturally, the first project she decided to write after graduating film school was a book. A few years, a handful of continental U.S. states, and many odd jobs later, that book became THE WINGSNATCHERS, the first book in the Carmer and Grit series. THE WINGSNATCHERS was a Kids Indie Next List pick and a Junior Library Guild Selection. Sarah Jean's standalone middle grade fantasy THE DARK LORD CLEMENTINE was an Amazon.com Best Book of the Month and received favorable reviews from the New York Times Book Review, School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and more. Her latest novel for young readers, THE DEMON SWORD ASPERIDES, received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews and Booklist, was one of Kirkus's Best Middle Grade Books of 2023, and was a winner in the 2024 Children's Book Council Favorites Awards. 

Outside of writing and reading, you can find Sarah Jean dabbling in knitting and crochet, making extensive thematic playlists, and watching the coziest British reality television she can find. Sarah Jean currently works in academic administration and lives with her spouse near Cambridge, MA. Her work is represented by Victoria Marini of Volume Five Literary.