Sara Marcus is a writer and musician best known for her 2010 book Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution, a finalist for the National Book Award. In her newest book, Political Disappointment, Marcus argues that the defining texts in twentieth-century American cultural history are records of political disappointment. Through insightful and often surprising readings of literature and sound, and moving from the aftermath of Reconstruction through the AIDS crisis, Marcus offers a new cultural history of the United States that shows how artists, intellectuals, and activists turned political disappointment—the unfulfilled desire for change—into a basis for solidarity.

"Marcus shows the ways in which Black activists and writers, in particular, have continued to express their political desires. In doing so, she draws our attention to the centrality of disappointment in American political life.”—Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, New Yorker

Marcus began her writing career as a participant in the riot grrrl movement, writing zines as a teenager in Washington, DC. She subsequently worked as a journalist, writing about music and politics. In 2018, she earned a PhD in English at Princeton University and is an assistant professor of English at the University of Notre Dame.