About me

I was born in Brooklyn, bought up in Los Angeles, came of age in Santa Cruz, and entered the real world in New York City. I've spent the last 40 years creating advertising and other communications for some of the world's largest brands, as well as some you'd need a séance to find. As a brand strategist, a creative director and a writer, I have worked on staff, in a freelance capacity, and as a consultant. I have experience working at the front and center of a brand, and also in the shadows. As a poet, I was a winner of the 2003 Discovery / The Nation Poetry Competition. My poem, "How I Know She's Coming Home," was selected by Natasha Trethewey, then United States Poet Laureate, for Meridian Best New Poets in 2007. I was invited to read in the 2017 Festival Internacional de Poesia en el Caribe, PoeMaRio in Barranquilla, Colombia.

Formal education

I received my Bachelor's degree from The University of California, Santa Cruz graduating with honors with degrees in Aesthetic Studies and Psychology. In 2009, I earned a Master's degree in Media Studies from The New School in New York City. My Master's thesis was titled: Manufacturing Authenticity: The Inadvertent Branding of New York City.

Informal education

After years of working with traditional agencies and digital agencies, blue-chip companies and startups, millionaires and bankrupts, lawyers and wise guys, boxing promoters and modern dancers, engineers and movie producers, bureaucrats, entrepreneurs, and environmentalists, I've learned that every story can be told, and told persuasively.

I believe my familiarity with ideas that span more than a decade, along with an acquaintance with morgues and patisseries, palazzos and Safe Houses, Encyclopedia Britannica and TikTok, enable me to make complex ideas and relationships comprehensible, as well as turn them into compelling stories.

Some published magazine & newspaper work

I have had poems published in The Nation magazine, Margie: The Journal of American Poetry, and New Millennium Writings and others. Some written works have also been featured in Adbusters, Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism, and The New York Times.

Gorbachev in Disneyland— Afterimage

A critique of a Louis Vuitton advertisement, which used Mikhail Gorbachev and "cold war" iconography to sell its luggage. The article concluded that the ad does not sell luxury, but ironically, the death of luxury.

Read

Death and the Angry Black Man— Adbusters

One from a collection of short stories titled "Six Little Deaths." It tells the story of an unlikely friendship and its inevitable conclusion.

Read

Idealism and New York Reality Collide in the Bike Lane— The New York Times

Oct. 9, 2009. "The bike lane. Another common-sense initiative to turn New York into a little Copenhagen. If only the city-bred people were as courteous as Danes."

Published books

American Lullaby: Poems by Robert A. B. SawyerExits But No Escapes Press, NYC, 2014
American Lullaby: Edicion Bilingue Con Nuevos PoemasTranslated by Tallulah Flores Prieto. Isla Negra Editores, January 1, 2019
Kiss & Sell: Writing for AdvertisingAVA Publishing, UK; Acquired by Bloomsbury Publishing, UK, 2004, reissued in 2006 in English and Spanish, and An ebook in 2019.

Produced works

My poem "Hong Kong Harbor," provided lyrics for a choral work composed by Philip White and conducted by Lesly Leighton, premiered in Los Angeles by Angel City Chorale on June 2, 2012. (Renamed "On This Side of the Window,” it was performed on May 11, 2015, by the Los Angeles Master Chorale Chamber Singers.)
Dark Joy — a one-act play which was one of three one-act plays that together created a piece called Lovers and Madmen. A two-week run at the Sanford Meisner Theater. Directed by Damien Gray.

Kiss & Sell: Writing for Advertising

First published in 2004 as Kiss & Sell: Writing for Advertising; it was reissued in 2006 in English and Spanish as Kiss & Sell: Writing for Advertising (redesigned & rekissed). Today, it is found on secondary book markets, and also in digital incarnations. In the book I wrote to my readers: As a copywriter, your job is not to amuse or entertain, but rather to introduce ideas, direct eyes, guide hands, and ultimately sell products. By studying the work here, you'll learn that good copy is as much a craft as it is an art, and, along the way, you'll learn how to succeed in the advertising and communications industries. The book was well received in the Anglophone world and remains relevant today.

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