Welcome! I’m the author of the book Sisters in Hate, a New York Times Editors’ Choice/Staff Pick and one of NPR’s Favorite Books of 2020. It was also shortlisted for the J. Anthony Lukas Prize.

Since 2018, I’ve been the editor in chief of The Atavist Magazine, where I’ve assigned and shepherded features honored with the Livingston Award for National Reporting, an Overseas Press Club Prize, a James Beard Award for Innovative Storytelling, the Dart Award for Excellence in Coverage of Trauma, and the Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Award for War Correspondents, among other prizes. I also co-hosted the magazine’s first-ever narrative podcast, No Place Like Home, about the theft of a pair of the ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz. Previously, I worked as an editor at Foreign Policy and The New Republic.

I’ve written for publications including The New York Times, Harper’s, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. I gravitate toward stories about social justice, politics, and culture, but I’m game to write about anything. I was one of FOLIO’s Top Women in Media in 2019, a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts the same year, and a fellow at the Sundance Institute in 2018. My peculiar name* is pronounced “say-word,” which is fitting because I love words: writing them, speaking them, reading them, editing them, sharing them. I grew up in the South and now live in Brooklyn with my husband, our beagle-dachshund, Magnolia, and our cat, Elaine May.**

Want to discuss a story? Just want to say hi? Check out my contact page. You can also follow me on Twitter: @seywarddarby. 

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*My name comes from this book.

**Hoping for adorable pet content? I’ve got you covered.