Sarah Kay is a celebrated writer, performer, educator, and founder of Project VOICE—an organization that has brought spoken word poetry into hundreds of classrooms and communities around the world. She is the author of five books of poetry: No Matter the Wreckage, B, The Type, All Our Wild Wonder, and her new collection A Little Daylight Left (April 2025.)
Through her work with Project VOICE, Kay has personally shared and taught poetry in over thirty countries, collaborating with educators at schools and universities worldwide. She has been invited to deliver keynotes and lead professional development workshops at industry-leading education conferences and with organizations such as the European Council of International Schools, the Association of International Schools in Africa, the National Association of Independent Schools in the U.S., the American Montessori Society, and multiple International Baccalaureate Organization Regional Conferences, among many others.
Kay has a masters degree in the Art of Teaching from Brown University, and has been a Hedgebrook Artist in Residence, a Serenbe Artist in Residence, a Kundiman Fellow, and a New Arizona Fellow at New America, as well as an upcoming Hawthornden Foundation Artist in Residence.
Keynote Speaker
Kay started performing her spoken word at age 14. She has delivered multiple Main Stage TED talks, starting in 2011, with a talk that garnered two standing ovations, over 15 million views, and remains one of the 80 Most-Viewed TED talks of all time. She has given commencement addresses at Scripps College and Grinnell, as well as convocation addresses at Cal State Long Beach and Case Western University (which also selected her poetry collection No Matter the Wreckage as its Freshman Summer Reading Book). She has also spoken at companies such as Coca Cola, Mattel, Hasbro, Forbes, Cisco, and Microsoft on writing, storytelling, leadership, and creativity.
Client Praise
“Sarah was fantastic! We’re so grateful to have had the opportunity to have her close out this year’s Summit!” —Boston College
Long-Awaited Poetry
In April 2025, a decade after her acclaimed debut, Kay is bringing her loyal fan base a long-awaited second full-length poetry collection, A Little Daylight. It is a vulnerable, searching collection about facing the beautiful and difficult parts of our humanness with curiosity and compassion.
Hanif Abdurraqib, New York Times bestselling author of There’s Always This Year has praised the collection as the “book that will make you feel simultaneously alive and less alone.”
Performances
Sarah Kay @ TED 2011: “If I should have a daughter…”