Sarah Shourd, a journalist and playwright, was held as a political hostage by the Iranian government, including 410 days in solitary, an experience she chronicled in A Sliver of Light: Three Americans Imprisoned in Iran.
She is a co-editor, with Jean Casella and James Ridgeway, of Hell Is a Very Small Place: Voices from Solitary Confinement (The New Press) and lives in Oakland, California.