Lauren Sandler is the bestselling author of three books of nonfiction, including the New York Times Notable Book This Is All I Got: A New Mother's Search for Home. The book was shortlisted for the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Prize, given by Columbia School of Journalism and Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism, and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, which recognizes a book that has “broken new ground by reshaping the boundaries of its form and signaling strong potential for lasting influence.” Sandler is currently developing her reporting in a Brooklyn shelter into a Broadway musical, expected to be staged in 2026.
A former NPR producer, Sandler's journalism, essays, and columns have appeared in dozens of publications including The New York Times, Slate, The Atlantic, The Nation, The New Republic, The Guardian, and New York Magazine. She has been a regular commentator for the BBC and a frequent guest on television and radio addressing issues of gender, culture, religion, and inequality. Sandler has led fellowships at Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, and The University of Virginia, and taught in the Graduate School of Journalism at NYU. In addition to MacDowell, Sandler has been a writer in residence at the Dora Maar House, the James Merrill House, VCCA in Virginia and France, and a Visiting Writer at NYU.
At MacDowell in 2018, Sandler revised This Is All I Got. She received a Yale Poynter Fellowship, a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship, the NYU Reporting Award, and a Calderwood grant to support its reporting. During a 2024 residency, Sandler worked on her fourth book, American Prophecy: One Family, Two Nations, And A World on Fire, about an ideologically divided Southern family, to be published by Random House in 2026.
