Sarah Uheida (25), from Libya, is a poet and experimental memoirist pursuing her MA in English studies at Stellenbosch University. Having fled the Libyan civil war at 13 with her family, Sarah resettled in South Africa, where she learned English.
Her creative work is inspired by language’s potential to instigate difficult socio-political conversations. She writes about post-war trauma, identity struggles, and the lived experiences of women who must exist as “displaced”—who seek asylum but do not find the opportunities and compassion needed to start over. Sarah received the Dan Veach Prize for Younger Poets and the Miles Morland Scholarship for African Writing to craft a memoir on the woman refugee experience. Her poem “Something to Hoard At Night” was published in The Other Side of Hope. Her nonfiction essay on women’s right to choose, "The Body Is More than a Landfill and Less than All that I Am," appears in Relations: An Anthology of African and Diaspora Voices. Other examples of her work have been published in anthologies such as Persea Books, New Contrast, and Atlanta Review.
Sarah believes in the transformative power of language education and plans to establish inclusive intellectual and creative spaces for women with curiosity but limited resources. Her goal is to pioneer academic and literary initiatives that place creative writing at the center of self-expression and socio-political change. By fostering language development through a lens of creativity and self-acceptance, she hopes to uplift and amplify the voices of women from diverse linguistic backgrounds.
