Born in Amsterdam, the daughter of a banker, Sarah spent her youth living in major European capitals and Chappaqua in Westchester. She graduated from Yale, where she helped get a sexual orientation nondiscrimination measure enacted, in 1988 with a degree in comparative French and German literature. Then she went to work for Michael Denneny, a pioneering editor in gay literature, at St. Martin's Press in New York. In 1989, Sarah was recruited to be arts editor at Outweek.

It was through her work at Outweek, which ceased publication in 1991, that Sarah came to meet Michael Goff, with whom in 1992 founded Out, the first glossy national gay and lesbian publication that aimed to bring in mainstream advertisers able to support a high end product.

In fact she was able to attract a range of advertisers, including Calvin Klein and General Motors, that had not previously appeared in gay publications. She became editor in chief in 1997 as Out magazine became one of the country's most influential gay and lesbian magazines.

In 1996, Goff left Out to pursue Internet magazine publishing opportunities at Microsoft, but Sarah stayed on until 1998. That year, in a high profile dust up over the direction of the magazine, Sarah was fired, and took Out to court charging sex discrimination and breach of contract. That case was settled out of court. Sarah went on to become the senior editor of the arts and entertainment section at Newsweek.

She died from complications related to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a particularly deadly form of cancer, at New York Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan. Sarah was, for more than a decade, a bright star in the world of lesbian and gay journalism and clearly an emerging major player on the national print media scene.