Oh hey! I’m Sarah Shay (she/her), a musician, writer, and podcaster based in Seattle. I perform, compose, record, write, and do a lot of other things because nobody ever told me that the second half of the phrase “jack of all trades” was “master of none.”
Clicking on the ‘Projects‘ tab and looking at my work is a better way to get to know me, but for those interested or curious, here’s a brief nutshell version of who I am.
Born and raised in the Seattle area, I settled on “darling of the stage and screen” as my career goal at the tender age of 6. A series of choirs and drama camps and school plays followed, until I realized in high school that I was not actually a particularly good actor. I took my wounded ego off to college, and began dabbling in other things.
Around this time I started in comics, writing and illustrating my webcomic Angry People from 2000 to 2003. I also moved to Michigan in a fit of pique, and during that time collaborated with fellow webcomic creator Corey Marie on her popular series Life’s So Rad. We co-wrote and published the zine of same name for a year, which featured long-form comics as well as music reviews and interviews. One day, after getting off the phone with a rep from Capitol Records (having just scheduled an interview with OK Go for the zine), I realized that I wanted to be a music journalist.
Back to Seattle, where I returned to school and finished my degree whilst working on the student newspaper. I spent the next six years freelancing as a music journalist, writing for Razorcake Magazine (CA), the Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA), and Candy for Bad Children (the internet), as well as a couple of liner notes for the Overdue Collection Agency record label. In another fit of pique, I decided I was tired of writing about other people’s music and wanted to make my own, and invited my brother Aaron J. Shay to start The Mongrel Jews, Seattle’s finest folk punk band (2009-2017). I taught myself to play washboard, mandolin, and ukulele, and began writing and performing solo material in 2013. I also began doing session work for other musicians (a full list of which can be perused on the Music page), and performing in and music directing local theater productions. I finally recorded and released my first full-length album, You Have Queer Street Cred, in 2018, and toured it down the coast.
In 2017, my friend and collaborator Strangely Doesburg invited me to start a podcast, and together we created Pilot House (2017-2022), an in-depth but loving dissection of TV pilots from beloved (and not-so-beloved) shows. After 71 episodes and two live shows at conventions, we put the podcast on hiatus to focus on other things.
I had been writing short fiction since my return to Seattle, and finally self-published two of the stories as handmade chapbooks in 2014 and 2017 respectively. I then recorded and released an audiobook collection, The Wedding Band and Other Stories, in March of 2020.
For the first six months of the pandemic, I ran an ongoing livestream series called The Isolated Literary Society, where I read works of fiction aloud every weekday (including Jane Austen, Neil Gaiman, and Lewis Carroll). The archived videos are still available to watch on YouTube. Around this same time I dabbled with being a music streamer on Twitch, but it wasn’t for me.
As of 2024, I decided to take a break from constantly begging people to notice me. I am still writing, singing, and occasionally playing music where other people can hear, and some day I may finally record that album I was working on when the pandemic hit. For now, I live in Ballard with two guinea pigs and a surprising number of spider plants, and freelance as a copy editor.
