After college, Crichton became a freelance writer and then an articles editor at
Seventeen where she was named editor in 1987. Crichton left
Newsweek in 1996 to become publisher of the Adult Trade unit at
Little, Brown & Company. She was the first woman in that position in the history of the publishing house. Crichton then served as a freelance editor for
Madeleine Albright's memoir,
Madam Secretary: A Memoir which was published in 2003. Following her work on the Albright memoir, Sarah Crichton co-wrote
Daniel Liebeskind's memoir,
Breaking Ground, published in 2004, and worked with
Joe Lieberman and
Hadassah Lieberman on their memoir of the 2000 presidential campaign,
An Amazing Adventure. Crichton co-wrote the bestselling
A Mighty Heart with
Mariane Pearl about the murder of Pearl's husband, journalist
Daniel Pearl, and Pearl's attempt to discover who was behind his assassination. In June 2004,
Farrar, Straus & Giroux announced that Crichton would become head of
Sarah Crichton Books, an imprint at the publishing house. Sarah Crichton Books published authors such as
Cathleen Schine,
David Finkel,
Matthew Quick,
John Leland,
Brigid Schulte, and
Ishmael Beah whose memoir of his life as a child soldier in
Sierra Leone,
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, became an international bestseller. In 2016, Crichton contributed an essay to the anthology
The Bitch is Back which
The New York Times described as "a tour de force of comedy and poignancy" about "the travails of dating again at almost 60." Crichton left Farrar, Straus & Giroux in December 2019 and was appointed
editor-in-chief of adult trade books at
Henry Holt and Company in April 2020. Crichton stepped down from the editor-in-chief position in 2023 to serve as
editor-at-large at Holt, continuing to work with authors such as
Cathleen Schine and
Michael Wolff. == References ==