As a DAAD scholar, she studied with Wolfgang Rihm from 1991 to 1994 at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe; Nigel Osborne[1] supervised her doctoral thesis.
[4][5] In 2010 and 2012, she taught at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses[1] and was composer-in-residence at the Konzerthaus Dortmund from 2005 to 2006,[6] Staatskapelle Dresden from 2009 to 2010,[7] and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in 2010.
[10] In 2024 Saunders received the Ivor Novello Award in the category Best Small Chamber Composition for The Mouth, for soprano and tape.
[14] She is fascinated with resonance and extraneous noise created by instrumentalists, such as the scratch of a bow change, the thud of the pedals of a piano or harp, and the taps and slides of the left hand on a string instrument's fingerboard.
[14] Due to the subtleties and specificity of the sounds she creates, Saunders includes lengthy textual explanations in many of her scores to describe each effect that she wishes the performer to produce.