Before publishing her debut novel, The Kaleidoscope of Destiny, Sarah Ignatius worked for many years as a human rights lawyer representing people seeking political asylum after fleeing from persecution throughout the world and as a non-profit executive director. Along the way, she also worked as a kids’ tennis instructor in Washington, D.C., a hamburger bun toaster and cashier at Mr. Bartley’s Burger Cottage in Cambridge, MA, and a rural community organizer in southeastern Montana.
She is half-Armenian, born in Massachusetts, and has also called California, Washington, D.C., Montana, and Washington state home.
The Kaleidoscope of Destiny centers around the fight for survival of a 14-year-old Armenian boy during the genocide of 1915 and has received recognition from the New England Society of Children’s Books Writers & Illustrators and the National League of American Pen Women. She was also selected as a Somerville Arts Council Literature Artist Fellow. Her short story Burning Embers received Honorable Mention from Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers.
She taught immigration and asylum law at Boston College Law School for many years and is the co-author of Immigration Law and the Family (Thomson Reuters). She authored a detailed report on the U.S. asylum system for Harvard Law School’s National Asylum Study Project, and her legal articles have appeared in the Harvard Human Rights Journal, Georgetown Immigration Law Journal, Benders Immigration Bulletin, and Immigration Briefings.
She earned her B.A. from Stanford University with Distinction and Honors in Anthropology, and her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center. She lives in Massachusetts with her family.