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Sarah Moss (born 1975) is an English writer and academic. She has published six novels, as well as a number of non-fiction works and academic texts. Her work has been nominated three times for the Wellcome Book Prize. She was appointed Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at University College Dublin's School of English, Drama and Film in the Republic of Ireland with effect from September 2020.

Biography

Sarah Moss was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and at the age of two moved with her family to Manchester, where she lived until at the age of 18, when she went to study at the University of Oxford. During the ten years she spent in Oxford, she earned a BA, Master of Studies and D.Phil in English Literature, and then held a postdoctoral research fellowship. From 2004 to 2009 she was a lecturer at the University of Kent. Following the publication in 2009 of her first novel, Cold Earth, Moss went to teach for a year at the University of Iceland. She then took up a post as Senior Lecturer in Literature and Place at University of Exeter's Penryn Campus in Cornwall, and subsequently moved to the University of Warwick, becoming Director of the Warwick Writing Programme, teaching creative writing.

Ghost Wall

Moss creates a motif of light at the outset of her Ondaatje Prize-nominated text, Ghost Wall, as a female character is brought out, ‘not blindfolded’, but with her ‘eyes widened’ to ‘the last light’ of the day and also quite possibly of her life. This foreshadowing narrative at the outset is an historic representation of a social evil that occurred in medieval England many centuries ago amongst those communities that practiced human sacrifice.

As the novel continues, we meet the Hampton family, who are involved in a re-enactment of life in northern England 2500 years ago, whilst the insidious influence of the racist and sexist Englishman Bill Hampton upon his wife Alison and his smart, seventeen-year-old Silvie, is slowly revealed.

This text is intended to 'shake up' the reader with its presentation of the nefarious role that personal power politics plays in domestic abuse, a highly pertinent theme for today.

Awards

Moss's 2011 novel Night Waking won the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. Her non-fiction book Names for the Sea: Strangers in Iceland was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize in 2013. In 2015 her novel Bodies of Light was shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize, and her novels Signs for Lost Children and The Tidal Zone were also shortlisted for the same award in 2016 and 2017 respectively. Her 2018 novel Ghost Wall was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize and the Polari Prize, and was longlisted for the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction.

Bibliography

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (January 2023)

Novels

• Cold Earth (Granta Books, 2009)
• Night Waking (Granta, 2011)
• Bodies of Light (Granta, 2014)
• Signs for Lost Children (Granta, 2015)
• The Tidal Zone (Granta, 2016)
• Ghost Wall (Granta, 2018)
• Summerwater (Pan Macmillan, 2020)
• The Fell (Pan Macmillan, 2021)

Non-fiction

• The Frozen Ship (2006)
• Scott’s Last Biscuit: the literature of polar exploration (2006)
• Spilling the Beans: reading, writing, eating and cooking in British women’s fiction 1770 – 1830
• Chocolate: A Global History (2009)
• Names for the Sea: Strangers in Iceland (Granta, 2012)
• My Good Bright Wolf (2024)

Critical studies and reviews of Moss' work

Summerwater

• Robson, Leo (22 March 2021). "Old habits : in Sarah Moss's novel 'Summerwater,' there's no holiday from history". The Critics. Books. The New Yorker. 97 (5): 69–71.

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Notes

1. Walsh, Megan (11 June 2009). "Cold Earth by Sarah Moss". The Times.
2. Welsh, Louise (28 February 2011). "Night Waking". Financial Times.
3. Wilson, Fiona (24 May 2014). "Bodies of Light by Sarah Moss". The Times.
4. Scholes, Lucy (23 July 2015). "Signs For Lost Children by Sarah Moss: An astute study of the sins of the mother". The Independent.
5. Lively, Penelope (9 July 2016). "The Tidal Zone by Sarah Moss review – a portrait of parental anxiety". The Guardian.
6. Talbot, Margaret (2 January 2019). "Sarah Moss's 'Ghost Wall,' a Slender Novel That Evokes Existential Dread". The New Yorker.
7. "Summerwater by Sarah Moss". Pan Macmillan. Retrieved 17 May 2020.
8. "The Fell by Sarah Moss". Pan Macmillan. Retrieved 10 November 2021.
9. Capelotti, P. J. (2007). "Review of Scott's last biscuit: the literature of polar exploration, by Sarah Moss". Polar Research. 26 (2). doi:10.3402/polar.v26i2.6214.
10. Grogan, Claire (2012). "Spilling the Beans: Eating, Cooking, Reading and Writing in British Women's Fiction, 1770–1830". European Journal of English Studies. 16 (1): 83–84. doi:10.1080/13825577.2012.655162.
11. Poole, Steven (19 December 2009). "Et cetera: Steven Poole's non-fiction roundup". The Guardian.
12. Jamie, Kathleen (2 November 2012). "Names for the Sea: Strangers in Iceland by Sarah Moss – review". The Guardian.
13. Online version is titled "In Sarah Moss's fiction, there’s no holiday from history".

References

1. ^ Crown, Sarah (2 July 2016). "Interview: 'You can't abandon your reader in a howling wasteland'". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
2. ^ "Sarah Moss". Wellcome Book Prize.
3. "Acclaimed Author Sarah Moss to join UCD". UCD. 28 November 2019. Retrieved 21 August 2020.
4. ^ "About". Sarah Moss. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
5. "Professor Sarah Moss". University of Warwick.
6. "About | Sarah Moss". Retrieved 3 November 2019.
7. "A Q&A with Sarah Moss". Women's Prize for Fiction.
8. "Sarah Moss". Women's Prize for Fiction. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
9. "Sarah Moss: The Tidal Zone - Book review - The Skinny". www.theskinny.co.uk. Retrieved 17 November 2024.
10. Brownrigg, Sylvia (25 October 2024). "From a Novelist, a Chilling True Fable of Anorexia". The New York Times. Retrieved 2 November 2024.
11. Peirson-Hagger, Ellen (15 September 2024). "My Good Bright Wolf: A Memoir by Sarah Moss review – an interrogation of an eating disorder". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved 17 November 2024.
12. Berry, Lorraine (24 October 2024). "Two extraordinary memoirs chronicle the ways mental illness carves chasms in a life". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 17 November 2024.

External links

• Sarah Moss
• Sarah Moss

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