Sarah Perry

I wrote about the power of place in my PhD thesis, particularly the importance of buildings in the Gothic (a genre which I find myself inhabiting without ever having meant to). Fiction in the Gothic inheritance makes much of the potent importance of the interior, from the castle where Jonathan Harker finds himself holed up to Thornfield, and from the suburban homes in Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black to the ghastly crypts in The Monk.

In June 2018 Perry was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in its "40 Under 40" initiative.

Her third novel is titled Melmoth, and was inspired by Charles Maturin's gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer. It was published by Serpent's Tail in October 2018. Melmoth has been shortlisted for the 2019 Dylan Thomas Prize.

Her second novel, The Essex Serpent, was also published by Serpent's Tail in 2016. Inspired by the myth of a sea-serpent on the Essex coast, it tells the story of a Victorian widow, Cora Seaborne, and the friends who surround her after the death of her bullying husband. Cora is intrigued and compelled by the possibility of the serpent's return, but clashes with the local vicar, William Ransome, who is determined to lay superstition to rest in his rural parish.

The Essex Serpent was nominated in the Novel category for the 2016 Costa Book Awards and was named Waterstones Book Of The Year 2016. It was placed on the long list for the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.

Perry's debut novel, After Me Comes the Flood, was released in 2014 by Serpent's Tail, receiving high praise from reviewers including those of The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian. The novel tells the story of a man named John Cole who wanders into a strange world while seeking out his brother amidst a drought. John Burnside, writing for The Guardian, called it "extraordinary" and "a remarkable debut."

In 2013 she was a writer in residence at Gladstone's Library.

Perry won the 2004 Shiva Naipaul Memorial prize for travel writing for 'A little unexpected', an article about her experiences in the Philippines.

Sarah Grace Perry FRSL (born 28 November 1979) is an English author. She has had three novels published, all by Serpent's Tail: After Me Comes The Flood, (2014) The Essex Serpent (2016) and Melmoth (2018). Her work has been translated into 22 languages.