Sara Shukla is an editor of WBUR’s ideas and opinion page, Cognoscenti.

Sara found her way to WBUR as a writer in 2020, before joining the team as an editor in 2022. Her first “Cog” was about her family’s experience in the first weeks of the pandemic, penned while her kids watched two hours of Looney Tunes. She’s since written about topics ranging from pandemic TV, surfing, Mel Brooks, Barbie and the Muppets, many of which Cog also produced for the radio. As an editor, she loves getting to work with both bestselling authors and writers for whom an essay in Cog counts as their first published piece of work.

In 2024 Sara published a debut novel, “Pink Whales,” which Kirkus Reviews called “a satisfying romp through a New England enclave that’s not nearly as idyllic as it seems.” She’s a proud alum of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator in Boston. And while her more recent writing can be found at Cog, her previous work includes the LA Review of Books and short humor in McSweeney’s and elsewhere.

Sara holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree from the University of Virginia — wahoowa —and she taught college writing in Virginia and Boston. She also once worked in book publishing and at an alternative newsweekly, and her favorite pre-WBUR job remains the Patagonia store on Newbury Street. While Sara’s pathway to journalism was circuitous, she’s been indulging her soft spot for a well-crafted essay since 11th grade AP English, when she designed a year-end project on pages torn from Surfer Magazine (shoutout to ‘90s editor Steve Hawk). A long-time listener, working at WBUR still feels like a homecoming, and Sara’s husband has a longstanding recurring reminder on his calendar to order the fundraiser roses on Valentine’s Day.

Sara lives with her family in Rhode Island where she spends the year looking forward to summer, in particular: days at the beach with her three kids, Del’s frozen lemonade, the Newport Folk Festival and saying this is the year she’s going to learn how to sail.