About Me

Meghan Nuttall Sayres is a writer and tapestry weaver from Washington State who raises sheep, spins and colors the yarn for her tapestries with natural plant dyes. She has traveled in Iran, Turkey, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, where she has met with scholars, carpet weavers, dyemasters and merchants to study the age-old techniques, symbolism, and Sufi poetry that infuse many rugs woven throughout the Middle East. While in Iran, she attended their First International Children’s Book Festival to speak about her debut novel, Anahita’s Woven Riddle, a story about an Iranian nomadic carpet weaver (Harry N. Abrams, Amulet Books, 2006) This book is an ALA Top Ten Best Books YA 2006, An Indie Pick Winter 2006/2007, and an ALA Amelia Bloomer Project Feminist Book Selection 2008.

The novel has been translated into foreign languages and CRS Libri/Rizzoli chose Anahita el’enigma del tappeto, as the featured book at the 2008 Bologna International Book Fair. She has completed a companion novel to Anahita entitled Night Letter. Meghan is also author of Weaving Tapestry in Rural Ireland (Cork University Press, 2007) and The Shape of Betts Meadow: A Wetlands Story (Millbrook Press/Lerner, 2002), a John Burroughs Nature Book 2002. She is co-author of Daughters of the Desert: Tales of Remarkable Women from the Christian, Jewish and Muslim Traditions (Skylight Paths Press, 2003). Her poems and essays have been published at home and abroad.

For more information, see my website meghannuttallsayres.com and follow me on Facebook and Twitter.