Biography.
Saramanda Swigart is thrilled to be writing mostly creative work after years of writing ad copy and corporate literature. She has lived and worked in Italy, New York, San Francisco, and Dubai. She has an MFA from Columbia University, with a supplementary degree in literary translation. Her short work and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Oxford Magazine, Visitant, Azure, Plainsongs, Perceptions, Superstition Review, Wrath-Bearing Tree, Evening Street Review, Arkana, The Poetic Sun, Ghost Town, Expanded Field, Interpretations, The Saranac Review, Glint Magazine, Reed, The Alembic, Glassworks, The Cape Rock, The Clackamas Review, The Meadow, Border Crossing, Soundings East, Hypertrophic Press, Euphony, The MacGuffin, Voices de la Luna, Streetlight, Big Muddy, El Portal, The Grief Diaries, Whistling Shade, The Broken Plate, Levee, Diverse Arts Project, Caveat Lector, The Literati Quarterly, Fogged Clarity, East Jasmine Review, Big Muddy, Ragazine, Forum, Green Hills Literary Lantern, The Penmen Review, Thin Air, The Furious Gazelle, Ponder Review, and the British anthology Temporal Discombobulations, and she has received an honorable mention in Glimmer Train. Her short story "The Earth Falls to the Apple" was nominated for a 2017 Pushcart Prize. Her first novel, Meaning Machine, about a family’s incompatible coping strategies in the face of loss, is currently out for consideration. She is working on a collection of interlocking stories, a second novel, Bad Influence, and a modern translation of the more salacious stories from Ovid's Metamorphoses. She lives in San Francisco and teaches at City College of San Francisco, College of San Mateo, and occasionally San Francisco State.
In addition to creative writing, Saramanda was a contributor to the grant-funded OER (Open Educational Resource) textbook How Arguments Work, a free, open-source rhetoric and composition textbook now being used at over 30 colleges, in the United States and abroad. From the official description:
How Arguments Work takes students through the techniques they will need to respond to readings and make sophisticated arguments in any college class. This is a practical guide to argumentation with strategies and templates for the kinds of assignments students will commonly encounter. It covers rhetorical concepts in everyday language and explores how arguments can build trust and move readers.
How Arguments Work was released in 2021. It is fully integratable into Canvas, the industry standard of online classrooms.
She also hasn’t completely given up copy writing. She writes for CLP (Career Ladders Project), a California State Chancellor’s Office organization that works with colleges and their partners to discover, develop, and disseminate effective, equity-minded practices. These are designed as direct efforts that lead to system change—and enable more students to attain certificates, degrees, transfers, and career advancement.
She does graphic design to supplement teaching and copywriting. Check out her design portfolio here.
Saramanda is also completing a second Masters degree at San Francisco State University, and recently became a Sally Casanova Pre-doctoral Scholar, preparing for a PhD, for which she hopes to investigate videogames through a postcolonial literary lens. She presents frequently on the topic at academic conferences, including the PAMLA, NeMLA, HERA, and Melus conferences, and won a Sally Casanova predoctoral grant to conduct independent research in summer 2023. In fall 2023 she taught “Video Games, Politics, and the State” for San Francisco State University’s Political Science Department. See her academic work here.