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In 2015 Sarah Polley suffered a concussion whose symptoms dragged on for three and a half years, until a specialist in Pittsburgh told her to stop resting in a dark room and move towards whatever set them off. A child actor in Road to Avonlea, she had already made Stories We Tell (2012), a documentary in which her family tells how she learned that her biological father was the producer Harry Gulkin. Run Towards the Danger (2022) applies the same advice to six memories she had avoided. In 2023 she won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Women Talking, from Miriam Toews’s novel, and in 2026 she began filming Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar with Billie Eilish. The ten writers below share her ground: the body as evidence, memory tested against other people’s versions, and the question of who gets to tell a story.
By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Personal essays · Memory and the body · Updated October 2026
Quick answer
If you love Sarah Polley, start with Miriam Toews, whose Women Talking (2018) Polley adapted for the screen. Mary Karr writes memoir as an argument with her own memory, as Polley does in Stories We Tell, and Deborah Levy’s short “living autobiography” mixes a life in pieces with thinking about how to tell it. Further down are the earlier women who wrote illness and the mind, and a novelist who turned away from autobiography altogether.
10 authors like Sarah Polley
Where to start if you loved Sarah Polley
If you loved Women Talking, read Miriam Toews.
The novel itself, then All My Puny Sorrows: grief, sisters and dark comedy.
If you loved Stories We Tell, read Mary Karr.
The Liars’ Club: a family memoir that knows memory is unreliable.
If you loved the title essay, read Joan Didion.
The Year of Magical Thinking: a mind watching itself under strain.
If you want the essays on being believed, read Carmen Maria Machado.
In the Dream House: abuse, silence and the form of telling it.
If you want more Sarah Polley, read the book and watch the films.
Run Towards the Danger (2022) is her only book so far. Her documentary Stories We Tell (2012) is the best companion to it.
Frequently asked questions about authors like Sarah Polley
Who writes like Sarah Polley?
Miriam Toews, Mary Karr and Deborah Levy are the closest matches. Polley adapted Toews’s novel Women Talking, Karr checks her memoirs against the people she writes about, and Levy’s “living autobiography” tells a woman’s life in a few short books.
What should I read after Run Towards the Danger?
Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club (1995) for a memoir that questions its own memory, and Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House (2019) for abuse and silence. Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking (2005) is closest to the title essay.
Is Women Talking based on a book?
Yes. It is based on Miriam Toews’s novel Women Talking (2018). Polley’s screenplay won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2023.
Does Sarah Polley have a new book?
No new book has been announced; Run Towards the Danger (2022) is her only book so far. Her next project is a film of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar starring Billie Eilish, which began filming in 2026.
How many books has Sarah Polley written?
One: Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory (2022), a collection of six personal essays. She has also written screenplays, including Away from Her (2006) and Women Talking (2022), and the television series Alias Grace (2017).
Is Sarah Polley like Joan Didion?
In method. Both write about their own minds under strain, Didion in grief and Polley after a long concussion, with the same exactness and lack of self-pity. Didion’s essays range more widely into politics and California.
Sources
List last reviewed 31 October 2026.
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