Sarah Long

Sarah Long is the author of the historical true crime works Woman at the Devil's Door and the forthcoming Deadfall: Mountain Mysticism, Moonshine, and the Killing Rock Massacre(University of Kentucky Press).

Her memoir Uprooted, coming from Regal House Press in 2026, chronicles her experiences as a sustainable farmer alongside her journey to find, and know, her birth family. Part meditation on adoption trauma and resilience, part love letter to the land, it wrestles with the most fundamental of human needs: belonging and becoming.

Through The Writing Cure, her narrative medicine practice, she guides people through the difficult work of writing toward healing. Certified in SEEN Through Story facilitation, she's spent years studying the neuroscience of therapeutic writing—how words on a page can literally rewire the pathways trauma carves through our bodies and minds. She works with individuals and organizations learning to metabolize grief, loss, and institutional fracture into something that can nourish what comes next.

As president of Slow Food USA Tri-Cities, she tends the stories we tell about food, land, and the communities that emerge when we slow down enough to taste what we're eating and who grew it. She's an active voice in sustainable and organic farming movements throughout North Carolina and Tennessee, regularly writing on the importance of maintaining local foodways and sustainable farming practices.

She's a Professor of Rhetoric & Writing at Appalachian State University, where her research explores the intersections between sustainable farming, technology, and women's empowerment. She lives on a 13-acre homestead in Johnson City, Tennessee with her husband, a professor of music, and a menagerie of rescued animals. There, she runs Spade & Spoon, an organic culinary garden and farm-to-table supper club focused on elevating humble ingredients to extraordinary meals that build community and highlight regional sustainable producers.

She holds degrees from the University of South Florida, Lancaster University, and Florida Southern College, and a culinary certificate from Leiths International School of Food and Wine in the UK.