Sapphire is the author of two books of poetry, Black Wings & Blind Angels, and American Dreams, a collection of poetry cited by Publisher's Weekly as "one of the strongest debut collections of the nineties." Her novel, Push, was published in 1996 and won the Book-of-the-Month Club Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction, the Black Caucus of the American Library Association's First Novelist Award, and in Great Britain, the Mind Book of the Year Award. Sapphire's poetry and prose have appeared in numerous journals and publications including, The New Yorker, Spin, Bomb, The Black Scholar, and The New York Times Book Review. Her work has been adapted for stage in the United States, France, and the Netherlands.