Sarris was born in 1952 in Santa Rosa, California. According to Sarris, his birth father was not named on the birth certificate, but friends of his birth mother believed Emilio Hilario was his birth father. Hilario's paternal grandfather was Filipino and his maternal grandparents were Tom and Emily Smith. Tom was Kashaya Pomo and Miwok. Mary Bernadette "Bunny" Hartman, of Irish and German-Jewish descent, was his mother. He was adopted by a local couple, George and Mary Sarris.

Sarris attended local schools through Santa Rosa Junior College, and received a B.A. in 1978 from UCLA, where he also played football. He worked in Hollywood as a model and actor before going to graduate school. He earned a Ph.D. in modern thought and literature at Stanford University in 1988, and returned to UCLA to teach in 1989.

He co-produced an HBO movie, Grand Avenue with Robert Redford in 1996.

Sarris serves as Chairman of Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, a federally recognized Indian tribe with offices in Rohnert Park, California.

Novels

• Watermelon Nights (1998)

Short story collections

• Grand Avenue (1994)
• The Sound of Rattles and Clappers: a Collection of New California Indian Writing (1994) (as editor and contributor)

Nonfiction

• Keeping Slug Woman Alive: A Holistic Approach to American Indian Texts (1993)
• Mabel McKay: Weaving the Dream (1994)
• Approaches to Teaching the Works of Louise Erdrich (2004)

• Elvira Pulitano, Toward a Native American Critical Theory. 2005. Sarris is one of six authors whose work is surveyed.

Greg SarrisGreg Sarris