Sarah Shourd is an American journalist, author and playwright. She is an advocate against the overuse of solitary confinement in prisons.[1] In 2009 and 2010, she was held as a political hostage in Iran's Evin Prison for 410 days under accusations of espionage. She subsequently coauthored a book about the experience with her fellow hostages, Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer. On September 14, 2010, the Iranian government released Shourd to the care of the Omani government.[2]
See main article: 2009–2011 detention of American hikers by Iran. In July 2009, Shourd was on a weekend trip with her then-boyfriend Shane Bauer and their friend Josh Fattal, who was visiting from the U.S. Shourd and Bauer lived in Damascus, Syria at the time. On July 31, 2009, Shourd was captured by Iranian border police after entering Iran while hiking around Ahmad Awa, a popular tourist destination in Iraqi Kurdistan, which was considered an American tourist-friendly destination.[3] The soldiers accused them of illegally crossing into Iran and arrested them on the spot.[4] They were driven to Evin Prison, in Tehran, where Shourd spent 410 days in solitary confinement in the political ward. She suffered from extreme depression and anxiety as a result of her time in solitary confinement.[5] [6] The arrest of Shourd and her two friends led to a global efforts campaigning for their release. Amnesty International also called on the Iranian authorities and demanded for the three's release.[7]
In 2010, Iran said they would release Shourd owing to her poor health condition (she was diagnosed with a pre-cancerous condition) after holding her more than a year in jail after a payment of bail of $500,000.[8] [9] She was finally released in September 2010, after a deal was brokered by the Swiss embassy that represents the US interests in Iran (the U.S. and Iran have not had diplomatic ties since 1979.)[10] After her release, Shourd stated that she was released because she was a woman and in solitary confinement, not because of her health condition.[11] She and her family publicly thanked Oman for playing a crucial role in making arrangements for securing her bail.[12] She also thanked Ali Khamenei and President Ahmadinejad for her release, fearing that an absence of such a statement would prevent the releases of Bauer and Fattal.[13] She was officially indicted of espionage and illegal entry by Iran.[14] Then-President of the United States Barack Obama issued a statement that he was pleased that she was released and was being reunited with her family.[15]
As a journalist, Shourd has published on a variety of platforms, such as the New York Times, Mother Jones, Reuters, Daily Beast, Salon, San Francisco Magazine, SF Chronicle, and many more.[16]
Shourd wrote, produced, and later directed a play on the subject of solitary confinement, The BOX, which premiered at Z Space in San Francisco in 2016, where it was directed by Cuban playwright Michael John Garcés. The play is based on the two-year investigation Shourd conducted while working with watchdog organization Solitary Watch and as a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley's Center for Law and Society, wherein she collected over 75 testimonies from prisoners kept in isolation in prisons across the U.S. She now works as an independent journalist, social engagement artist, and human rights strategy consultant in Oakland, California.
Shourd was a UC Berkeley Visiting Scholar in 2014.[17]
Shourd did her Bachelors of Arts in 2001 from University of Berkeley.
Shane Bauer proposed to Shourd while the two were in prison.[18] They married on May 5, 2012 in California,[19] and subsequently divorced in 2019.
| 2014 | A Sliver of Light | Co-authored with Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal | |
| 2016 | [20] | Editor, along with James Ridgeway and Jean Casella | |
| 2019 | Flying Kites: A Story about the 2013 California Hunger Strike.[21] |
| Year | Title | Publication | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | Tortured by Solitude[22] | The New York Times | |
| 2014 | How We Survived Two Years of Hell As Hostages in Tehran[23] | Mother Jones | |
| 2014 | Torture Chambers of the Mind[24] | The Washington Spectator | |
| 2015 | How Zapatista women learned to wear the pants—literally[25] | Salon | |
| 2020 | Coronavirus crisis exposes public safety risk of mass incarceration | San Francisco Chronicle |
| 2016 | GLIDE Memorial Church's Hero Award[26] |
| 2014 | Mesa Refuge Fellowship[27] | |
| 2015 | Furthur Foundation Grant[28] | |
| 2013 | Shuttleworth Foundation Grant[29] | |
| 2016 | Ragdale Residency[30] | |
| 2019 | John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford[31] |