Essays & Stories
 

Sarah Harley is a nonfiction writer whose essays explore trauma, memory, and identity. Her work has appeared in West Trade Review, Glassworks Magazine, Mud Season Review, and other literary journals. She is currently completing a collection titled Back to Blue and Other Essays, as well as a novella, The Age of Consent.
 

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2025

The Rest

Press Pause Press, Volume 11 (October)

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The House of Dolls

The Hemlock Journal, (October)

—"I changed, but the doll I made of myself is still there, her features wearing away with time."

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The Eiderdown

Pithead Chapel, Volume 14 (October)

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Pernod: A Love Story

Chaotic Merge Magazine, Issue 9 (September)

—"The first sip always evokes something half-remembered, bitter herbs and damp earth, the memory of a garden after rain— as if the past was dissolved into a single glass."

 

​Night Swimming

EcoTheo Collective (September)

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Where the Water Goes

The Awakenings Review (Fall)

—"I was like the river, wanting to reach the sea and let go of everything I had been carrying: memories, hurt, clutches of abandonment; silt and broken branches." 

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The Emptying

Ginosko Literary Journal (Spring-Summer 2025)

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The Weather
Wayfarer Magazine (July)
—"We were lost in our own world—the lovers' world."

​The End in the Beginning
Quail Bell Magazine (May)—(Archived)

Read Full Essay (PDF)
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How to Love in Reverse
The Write Launch, Issue 92 (February)
 — "Everything I cut becomes whole again."

The Paper Flowers​
Pensive, A Global Journal of Spirituality & the Arts (January)

​Walking the Line
Bluestem Magazine (Winter) 

— "I built a watchtower along the borderland between normal and delusion."
 
2024
Dimensions of a Coffin Reprint
SugarSugarSalt Magazine (November)

All Things Parallel
Chicago Story Press (October)
​— "She possessed a need to become the tiniest version of herself. So she became smaller and smaller, as if she would, one day, vanish altogether."

​All That Glitters
Please See Me, Issue 15 (October) 
 
The Atlantic Hotel​
Mud Season Review, Issue 75 (September) 
— "I realize she’s been left in the hotel room since she died when I was thirteen. A part of me, who used to have a mother, is there too. We are exiles."

​The Bridge to Nowhere
Halfway Down the Stairs (September)  
 
The Bridge
Where Meadows, Issue 2.2 (September) 
 —"The bridge goes from one place called nowhere to another." 

Drinking
The Perch, Yale University, Volume 7 (Spring)
 
Love by the Tracks
Litro Online (April)
 —"Love is the vestige in which the sweetness of all things lost remains."

The Wings
West Trade Review, Volume 15 (Spring)
 
Have You Got the Moon Safe?
Glassworks Magazine, Issue 28 (Spring)
 
The Things We Neglect
Press Pause Press, Volume 9 (February)
— "We ate the salad in the garden like defunct Italian lovers outside a villa."

The Deep Blue Fugue
Quail Bell Magazine (February)—(Archived)

Read Full Essay (PDF)

2023
Lost at Sea
Longridge Review (Fall)
— "I feel abandoned although she is holding me."

The Character Lessons
Litro Online (June)
 
The Episodes
Herstry (June)
 
Paper Dolls
Quail Bell Magazine (May)—(Archived)
 —  "I see it now: the dolls were tiny replicas of my young mother."  

Read Full Essay (PDF)

The Arc of Motherhood
The Thieving Magpie (Spring)
 
When the Hills Fell
Idle Ink- Curiouser & Curiouser (February)
 —  "We grew up in the damage, in the ruins wrenched by the fault line from which our family was created."

  
 2022
Dimensions of a Coffin
Halfway Down the Stairs (June)

 —​ "Pain has rented a space in me in exchange for a piece of myself."