Sara Midda (née Davis) was born in Brighton, Sussex, on 8 November 1951 and has drawn since early childhood. She studied at Eastbourne College of Art, then at Goldsmiths in London, before completing postgraduate studies in illustration and printmaking at St Martin’s School of Art, where Fritz Wegner was a particular inspiration. Her first book was published there in 1976.
Her groundbreaking and bestselling In and Out of the Garden (1981) was published by Workman Publishing and established her distinctive fusion of word and image through precise observation and lettering. The book won the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Francis Williams Award in 1982 and led to a 20-year collaboration with the Japanese department store Mitsukoshi Isetan, designing a wide range of products.
While living in France, her drawings and postcards evolved into South of France: A Sketchbook (1990), a scrapbook of images, photographs and handwritten texts. In 1990, she met her husband, Heinz Propper; they lived in France for many years before returning to Sussex in 2006.
Sara began exhibiting in London in the late 1980s and has shown regularly at the Chris Beetles Gallery since 1991. Her book Growing Up and Other Vices (Jonathan Cape, 1994) won the Bologna Children's Book Fair’s Bologna Ragazzi Award in 1995.
Later books include A is for Adultery, Angst and Adults Only (2002) and How to Build an A (2008). A retrospective exhibition of her work was held at the Chris Beetles Gallery in 2025.