May 2022: Honest Dog Books of Bayfield, Wisconsin, selects Three Ways to Disappear as its fiction Book of the Month…and it becomes the store’s No. 1 bestseller for the month of May!

June 2021: Booktuber Lovis Geier names her Top 10 Ecofiction Titles on Ecofictology. I was proud my book was included alongside so many outstanding titles… and I happy-danced when I learned where Lovis ranked Three Ways to Disappear!

March 2021: Three Ways to Disappear wins the Phillip H. McMath Post-Publication Book Award, and I am THRILLED. Happy news to balance out a year of pandemic life!

January 2021: Podcaster Charlie Place of The Worm Hole asks all the best questions. Her British accent made the conversation especially delightful!

November 2020: A Thanksgiving gift: being included in The New York Times article “Words of Gratitude from Kentucky.”


AuthorLink interview: “Three Ways to Disappear: The Evolution of a Novel.” In which Ellen Birkett Morris and I talk about the writing of the book. The kind of book-nerd conversation I love best!

September 2020: A delightful YouTube review on Ecofictology, by naturalist Lovis Geier. Bonus: a hilarious tiger animation!

September 2020: Featured in “Around the World in 80 Books,” an article about fiction from every continent exploring climate and ecological change. By Dragonfly.eco’s Mary Woodbury.

August 2020: Long-listed for the Clara Johnson Award for Women’s Literature, along with PEN/Faulkner winner Chloe Aridjis, Man Booker International winner Jokha Alharthi, Susan Straight and other tremendous writers.

July 2020: Talking about books with the delightful Jennifer Caloyeras on her Los Angeles-based podcast Books Are My People. I recommend Sleeping Together by Kitty Cook, Blue Territory by Robin Lippincott, and The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery.

June 2020: The Roadrunner Review calls Three Ways to Disappear a novel for the pandemic.

May 2020: The Eric Hoffer Book Award (which is actually a bunch of awards) was good to Three Ways to Disappear, which won the First Horizon Award for debut authors….

…and the Micro Press Award for books of any kind from a press publishing 24 or fewer books a year …

…was named a finalist for the Montaigne Medal for the most thought-provoking books …

…and was short-listed for the Grand Prize. The Hoffer Award attracts more than 2,000 entries every year. I’m grateful to the judges who honored Three Ways in, well, four ways.

Talking writing craft in an interview with journalist and playwright Marilyn Millstone.

Netflix’s limited series “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness” could have spotlighted the plight of captive tigers. Instead it used them as props. In my April 28, 2020, op-ed for the Louisville Courier-Journal, I talk about how our love of wild animals sometimes hurts them.

“Modern Mrs. Darcy” Anne Bogel puts her brilliant literary matchmaking skills to work as we talk about my favorite books (and two I don’t like) on her fun and inspiring podcast, What Should I Read Next!

File this under “I Can’t Believe My Book Is in This Company”: That’s my novel in this stack along with books by Ocean Vuong, Julia Phillips, Kiley Reid, Taffy Brodesser-Akner…. All longlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. So honored to be here!

February 2020: Talking revision, tigers, and our latest reads on the Perks of Being a Book Lover podcast with hosts extraordinaire Amy and Carrie. We recorded this in the Mansion at Spalding University—you might hear those high ceilings!

Three Ways to Disappear named “Best Book from a Small Press” in the 2019 Year in Books, The Ryder, the indie newspaper of Bloomington, Indiana.

Face to face with inspiration: A Louisville Courier-Journal feature article (January 2020) reunites me with Leela, one of the tiger cubs who inspired my book.

Cincinnati is a city of book lovers, and Books by the Banks does an outstanding job supporting reading and literacy. Delighted that Books by the Banks: Cincinnati Regional Book Festival sent me home with the Author Award for Best Fiction.

Cincinnati Magazine names Three Ways to Disappear one of “Top 5 local books to spend an afternoon with.”

Khaas Baat reviewed Three Ways to Disappear (on the same page with Salman Rushdie’s Quichotte, no less) and called it “a fine tale that embraces the majestic Bengal tiger on one side; and childhood trauma, marriage, family secrets, tragedy, forbidden love and compassion on the other.”

Three Ways to Disappear is named an IAN Book of the Year finalist! - Oct. 2019

I spent October 20, 2019, with creative writing students at the Mary Ellen and Jim Wayne Miller Celebration of Writing at Western Kentucky University. Blown away by these young writers. We talked craft, technique, and the surprising (or is it?) relationship between fiction and empathy.

“The act of forgiveness was also an act of family preservation.” On setting the story in India and Louisville, writing parallel human-tiger stories, and finding the theme of preservation in some surprising places. Mary Woodbury and I talk on Dragonfly.Eco.

On the Girlfriend, We Need to Talk! podcast, I talked with Leana Delle on inspiration, writing, and sometimes being the last to know what it is you’re doing. (Also, learn about the writing program that led to my novel—the Spalding University low-residency MFA in Writing—and its new sister, the Spalding MA in Writing with creative and professional tracks.)

Talking tigers with Angie Fenton, host of Great Day Live, WHAS-11 TV, Louisville.

Podcast hosted by the terrific writer and journalist Darlyn Finch Kuhn! Recorded August 11, 2019, in Jacksonville, Florida. We discussed inspiration, craft, and a surprise translation of a Hindi newspaper article on Scribbler’s Corner at River of Grass.

Barnes & Noble names Three Ways to Disappear a Top Indie Favorite!

July 31, 2019: In his review for alt-weekly LEO Weekly, T.E. Lyons says “Sarah DeVaughan is a vivacious invention.”

July 30, 2019: In my “Seven Questions With…” interview with Insider Louisville, the topics include my first concert, my favorite bar, and my total lack of food service skills.

July 29, 2019: North American Review, the nation’s oldest literary magazine, runs a hybrid review under the title “Narrative Preservation.” Reviewer Kaylene Johnson-Sullivan looks at the novel through the lens of her own beloved land, Alaska. This review took first place at the National Federation of Press Women awards, winning out over 1,800 other entries!

July 26, 2019: Three Ways to Disappear is featured on Indian Link: “READ, LISTEN, EAT, WATCH: What We’re Loving Right Now”

Times of India Books page, July 18, 2019, from an IANS wire service story, which also appeared in Indian Link, an Australian digital mag.

Front page of the Jaipur Times! July 18, 2019. Glorious photos of Machli.

My essay for the “Research Notes” blog on Necessary Fiction tracks the origin of my tiger obsession and the story of how I followed it to India.

Best writing assignment ever for a tiger-loving reader and writer: I wrote about the 10 best tigers in fiction for Literary Hub.

Three Ways to Disappear made the front page of the Rajasthan Patrika! Launch day, July 16, 2019

My Spalding MFA classmate Kaylene Johnson-Sullivan and I talk point of view, regrets, plotting vs. pantsing, and what happens when you kill 28,000 of your darlings.

Ranthambore’s blogger got wind of the book … and seems to be happy about it

Indian magazine Firstpost asks how Machli and Ranthambore gained starring roles
Journalist Prathap Nair and I had a transcontinental Skype conversation about tigers, the role of environmental fiction, and the possibility of hope.

Newsweek features the story behind the story of Three Ways to Disappear
Three Ways to Disappear grew out of a life-changing trip to India. My essay in Newsweek features the true story that fueled the novel.

Three Ways to Disappear Featured in The Indian Sun

2019 Al Smith Fellowship Award
In recognition of artistic excellence, I received an Al Smith Fellowship Award from Kentucky Arts Council, the state arts agency, which is supported by state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. It was an honor to be in the class of 2019.

Three Ways to Disappear Wins the Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature
Three Ways to Disappear has won the Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature, awarded by Ashland Creek Press.