New Poetry Collection: Light of Wings

Finalist, 2024 NM/Arizona Book Awards

Sarah Kotchian is a writer and artist whose creative work arises from the solitude and beauty of walks in the foothills and mountains of New Mexico.  A former environmental health agency director, she is also trained as a lay pastor and spiritual director.  

Her most recent book of poetry, Light of Wings, a poetry finalist for the NM/Arizona book Award, witnesses to the abundant beauty of the world and the grief of losses that are at once personal and universal. 

She completed a 500-mile solo pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago in Spain in 2012. Camino, her book of poetry and photographs about that pilgrimage, received the New Mexico–Arizona Book Award and the Seven Sisters Book Award. 

A contributor at the 2019 Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference and a nominee for the Pushcart Prize, her work has appeared in Writing the Wild, Flyway, Split Rock Review, Stoneboat Literary Journal, High Shelf Press, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Tulip Tree Review, Persimmon Tree, Bosque Journal, Presence Journal, ABQ inPrint, The New Mexico State Poetry Anthology and on The Unruly Muse podcast. 

A long-distance hiker, she has walked the Camino de Santiago in Spain, the West Highland Way in Scotland, the Kerry Way in Ireland, the Catalan Pyrenees in Spain, the Coast to Coast walk, portions of the South West Coast Path, the Pembrokeshire Coast Path, and the North Downs Way in England and Wales, as well as hiking trails throughout the United States.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in American Literature from Middlebury College, a Master of Education from Harvard University, a Master of Public Health from the University of Washington, and a PhD in American Studies from the University of New Mexico. She and her husband live in New Mexico.