Colette Sartor

Colette Sartor grew up a nice, New Jersey Italian girl looking to escape the trajectory expected from nice, New Jersey Italian girls: marriage, three-kid minimum, Sunday mass followed by a sit-down dinner for the entire extended family that she alone would cook, clear, and clean up. After fleeing to Los Angeles to be an entertainment lawyer, she found herself disappointed by the Southern California beaches (not nearly as pretty as the Jersey shore) and by lawyering (which sucked), so she quit her job after a few years (okay, eight) and started writing fiction.

Colette’s linked short story collection Once Removed (University of Georgia Press) won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, the IAN Best Book of the Year Award for Outstanding Short Story Collection, the NYC Big Book Award for Short Story Collections, and the Juror's Choice Award and the Short Stories Award in the National Indie Excellence Awards. In addition, it was first runner up for the Eric Hoffer Short Story/Anthology Award and a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize, the Eric Hoffer First Horizon Award, the IAN Best Book of the Year Award for Outstanding Women’s Fiction, and the Balcones Fiction Prize, and was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Fiction.

Her stories and essays have been widely published, including in in The Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, New York Magazine’s The Cut, Kenyon Review Online, Colorado Review, Slice Magazine, Carve Magazine, Hello Giggles, and elsewhere. In addition to the Flannery O’Connor Award, she has been granted a Writers@Work Fiction Prize, a Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award, a Reynolds Price Short Fiction Award, a Truman Capote fellowship from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she completed her MFA, as well as residencies with the Ragdale Foundation, and Tin House Summer Workshops.

Colette has taught writing for almost 20 years and currently teaches at UCLA Extension Writers’ Program as well as privately. She also cohosts the Literary Roadhouse Bookclub podcast. In addition, she is the Executive Director of The CineStory Foundation, a nonprofit mentoring organization that pairs emerging TV writers and screenwriters with entertainment industry professionals as mentors. She still lives in Los Angeles with her husband, son, and German Shepherd Dog who has yet to outgrow his destructo-boy tendencies, and she never wants to practice law again.

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Author Photo by Rayme Silverberg