Sarah Lewis

”Many of our most iconic, creative endeavors – from Nobel Prize-winning discoveries to entrepreneurial inventions and works in the arts – are not achievements but conversations, corrections after failed attempts.”

Sarah Lewis is the bestselling author of The Rise, which is the biography of an idea—a big idea—that no current term yet captures. It’s about creative human endeavor, and how innovation, mastery, and new concepts are found in unlikely places. Lewis also guest-edited the “Vision & Justice” issue of Aperture— a landmark collection that addresses race, photography, and social justice.

Lewis’s first book, The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery, a bestseller, has been hailed by a who’s who of creative thinkers. Lewis Hyde calls it a “welcome departure from standard accounts of artistry and innovation.” The New York Times calls it “strikingly original”: “Lewis’s voice is so lyrical and engaging that her book, The Rise, can be read in one sitting, which is so much the better since its argument is multilayered and needs to be taken whole.” 

Lewis has spoken on the TED main stage, appeared on Oprah’s “Power List,” served on President Obama’s Arts Policy Committee, been profiled in Vogue, and is currently an Assistant Professor at Harvard University. She has held positions at Yale’s School of Art, the Tate Modern, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and her essays have been published in Artforum and The Smithsonian. Her upcoming book is under contract with Harvard University Press. She received her B.A. from Harvard, M. Phil from Oxford, and Ph.D. from Yale.