Sarah Chihaya is an American writer, professor, and literary critic. In 2020, she was one of several co-authors of "The Ferrante Letters: An Experiment in Collective Criticism", published by Columbia University Press. In 2025, she released her debut memoir, "Bibliophobia", with Random House.
Early life and education.
Chihaya grew up in Ohio as the child of Japanese and Japanese-Canadian immigrants.
Career.
Chihaya's book reviews, interviews, and essays have appeared in "The New Yorker", "The New York Review of Books", "Los Angeles Review of Books", "The Nation", "The Yale Review", and other publications.
Chihaya has served as an English professor at Princeton University. She has also taught at the University of California, Berkeley and New York University.
In 2020, Chihaya was the co-author of "The Ferrante Letters: An Experiment in Collective Criticism" alongside Merve Emre, Katherine Hill, and Juno Jill Richards. The book was published by Columbia University Press.
In 2023, Chihaya had earned a Whiting Award in Creative Nonfiction for her then-forthcoming debut memoir "Bibliophobia". The judges stated: "Soul-baring, witty, and slyly provocative, "Bibliophobia" unsettles our most widespread and unexamined beliefs about books and reading."
In 2025, Chihaya released "Bibliophobia", which discusses her complicated relationships to books along with several difficult experiences in her life. "The New Republic" called it "a welcome splash of lemony sourness to cut the bland sweetness of much popular discourse about books, which can tend toward boosterism, bibliotherapy, or... a nostalgic relation to books as objects and symbols that sometimes has little to do with the actual practice of reading."