Sonja's writing has been honored with a NYFA Fellowship, an Iowa Review Award, Pushcart Prize nomination, and grants from Vermont Studio Center and The Deming Fund for Women. Her work has appeared in some of the country's finest literary journals, including the Iowa Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Southeast Review, AGNI, the Spoon River Poetry Review, BREVITY, Gulf Coast, and is anthologized in several texts on writing, including SHORT TAKES, THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER, and THE CURIOUS WRITER. Sonja holds an MFA from the University of New Orleans and an M.S. Ed. from SUNY Brockport. She is an Assistant Professor in the MFA Program at the University of Memphis and visits schools and universities around the nation to give readings and craft lectures on nonfiction writing.

Sonja's first book, GHOSTBREAD, won an AWP Book Prize for Nonfiction.

Sonja currently divides her time between Memphis and Western New York. She edits the Lit Log Postcard Memoirs and is married to the painter Jim Mott.