Dr Sarah Krasnostein
Dr Sarah Krasnostein is a multi-award-winning writer and critic. She holds a doctorate in criminal law from Monash University and is admitted to legal practice in New York and Victoria. She has taught post-graduate criminal law as well as creative writing.
After earning her Bachelor of Arts (Honours) and Bachelor of Laws (Honours) from The University of Melbourne, she worked at global law firm Sullivan & Cromwell in New York. After returning to Australia, she worked for the Federal Attorney-General’s Office, the Victorian Department of Justice, the Victorian Law Reform Commission and the Sentencing Advisory Council.
Her doctoral thesis, "Pursuing Consistency: The Effect of Different Reforms on Unjustified Disparity in Individualised Sentencing Frameworks", completed under the supervision of Professor Arie Freiberg, was awarded the 2016 Mollie Holman Doctoral Medal for Law. Her research has been cited by the Victorian Court of Appeal, the Victorian Sentencing Advisory Council, and various academic journals.
Dr Krasnostein is the best-selling author of The Trauma Cleaner (2017), The Believer (2021), the Quarterly Essay, Not Waving, Drowning (2022), On Peter Carey (2023) and, with Helen Garner and Chloe Hooper, The Mushroom Tapes (2025). The Trauma Cleaner is available in multiple translations, and The Believer was named by The New Yorker as a Best Book of 2022.
She has won Walkley Awards for long form feature writing and arts criticism, and has been awarded the Victorian Prize for Literature; the Australian Book Industry Award for General Non-Fiction; the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Non-Fiction; the Prize for Non-Fiction at the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards and the Dobbie Literary Award. She was a finalist for the Wellcome Book Prize (UK); the National Biography Award; the Melbourne Prize for Literature; the Walkley Book Award and the Nib Literary Award.
Dr Krasnostein is a regular contributor to The Monthly and The Saturday Paper. Her work can be found in a variety of publications in Australia, America and the United Kingdom.