Spotlight & Giveaway: Principles of (E)motion by Sara Read

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Sara Read to HJ!

Hi Sara and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Principles of (E)motion!

 
Hi all! and Welcome!
 

To start off, can you please tell us a little bit about this book?:

This is a book with a LOT of big feelings! It’s about a genius mathematician with a debilitating panic disorder who contends with the damage from her prodigy childhood & the prejudices of her field to prove a historic proof is her own. And also a story about the very important difference between conditional and unconditional love.

Meg Brightwood solves a world-changing mathematical problem so impenetrable it’s nicknamed the Impossible Theorem. But to tell the world about the amazing thing she’s done, she has to face her jealous, mathematician father who denied her a normal childhood, and who has rather different ideas from Meg about who ought to get credit for the proof. So she locks it away in a safe and tries to come to grips with a life badly restricted by anxiety and reclusiveness.

But fate sends her the unlikeliest of allies. Isaac Wells–high school dropout, carpenter, in trouble with the law, and the one love of Meg’s life.

When Meg goes to retrieve the Impossible Theorem, she finds it missing. Her fight for the achievement of the century tests the limits of her brilliance and the endurance of two vulnerable hearts.
 

Please share your favorite lines or quote(s) from this book:

“There’s a feeling when you meet someone, that somehow you’ve known them all your life. And not even all your life. Like you’ve known them all of some other life where you are completely yourself. Not the one you’re living, where you are who people expect you to be, but some better life. The one you should have been living all along. That’s how it was with Isaac.”

“Finding ourselves alone together, I sensed we both had our guard up. But his weren’t the fresh, bristling defenses of a person who doesn’t use them much. They were like earthen berms built high and heavy, and long since grown over in grass. Like mine.”

“I stood there in that cold cabin, wrapped in that scratchy, musty-smelling blanket, thirty-eight years old, with the stove hissing, and the water beginning to boil. With Isaac Wells and his messed up leg and his arrest warrant. With a proof that would change the world locked up far away in the basement safe. With all my flaws and all my history and all my pain.
And I loved. And was loved.”

What inspired this book?

Meg and Isaac in Principles of (E)motion are distantly inspired by Margaret Hale and John Thornton of Elizabeth Gaskell’s masterpiece, North and South. They are very different characters and it’s a very different story, but they have something of the vibe of Gaskell’s characters–two very different people who learn to understand one another and see each other’s whole selves the way no one else does or can.
I was also so inspired by women in the hard sciences–the really cutting edge researchers. There is something about the mind of a researcher that is like the mind of a creative artist. A tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty, and and willingness to reach out to the very edge of what they can do.

How did you ‘get to know’ your main characters? Did they ever surprise you?

I have known these characters for so long! I even wrote an entire novel from Isaac’s point of view before I decided that even from his point of view it was still Meg’s story, so maybe Meg should tell it. I wrote short stories to explore their backstory–his and hers separately.

I tend to write an awful lot of material that doesn’t make it into the finished novel–like two or three times as much as I need to make a novel! Through all that exploration, I get to know the characters and the world pretty well after a while.

What was your favorite scene to write?

One of my favorites was the big showdown at the end, but if I tell you about that, there will be spoilers!

I really enjoyed writing the scene where Isaac teaches Meg to split wood. He’s got a bum leg so he can’t do it himself and he’s frustrated. But she’s delighted! She’s been working so intensively with her mind for so long, and she’s itching to learn how to do practical things that she can see and touch. It’s an affectionate scene where they are both appreciating the other’s good qualities.

Isaac cursed a few times outside, then the door opened. He stood there, breathing hard and scowling.
“We need a fire, and I cannot fucking manage an ax on one leg,” he said. “You’re going to have to split the wood.”
“I don’t know how to split wood.”
He turned back to the outside. “I’ll bet you can learn. All those brains’ve got to be good for something.”
I followed him. “So this is what you’re like when you’re grumpy? Good to know.”
He shot me a look over his shoulder, frustrated but not without a humorous twitch of the eyebrow.
He leaned on his crutches. “Get a log out—not that one, the grain’s going to give you trouble… That one’s good. Now, set it on end on the stump.”
I did as I was told.
He took a pair of safety goggles out of his pocket. “You should wear these.”
They were ancient and scratched. “Do I have to?”
“Unless you want a splinter in your eye.”
I took them. I did not want a splinter.
Isaac hobbled over and picked up the ax.
“Hold it like this.” He couldn’t do much of a demonstration, but he was able to show me the arc of the swing in slow motion.
I took the ax and placed my hands as he showed me. “Like this?”
“That’s good.” He hobbled back a few steps. “Legs wide. Left foot forward, right foot back. And bend your knees a bit.”
I gripped the ax handle and eyed the log in front of me. There was something deeply calming in knowing that I was about to commit a minor act of violence. Ax. Log. Impact. Breaking. I dropped immediately into the kind of deep focus I always strove for when I was working.
“Step back a bit,” Isaac said. “It seems like you want to be closer, but you forget how long the handle is when you really give it room to swing. Hands a little wider.”
My first blow missed, but not by much. The ax hit the stump and jarred my arms. Isaac started to speak, but I held up my palm.
“No. Let me try again.”
He stepped back. I took it slower this time, testing the angle and impact. Principles of arc and momentum were at work here. The ax-head was a point on a circumference, the handle the radius. I lifted and swung. And missed again. This time Isaac said nothing.
My next swing glanced off the edge of the log and knocked it over. I muttered ‘damn’ and set it upright. I swung again. This time it struck true and drove the ax-head into the wood, but not far enough. I struggled to get it out.
“Take the log off the ax. Not the ax out of the log,” Isaac said.
I did. And set it up again.
“Use the torque of your body.” He sat on the back stoop, leg extended. “And on the downstroke, use the weight of the ax. You want to almost pull it down through the wood.”
My shoulders and arms tightened, and I swung again, a perfect, round sweep over my head. I hit the same spot, only this time the log sprang in half, only a few pale fibers holding it together. I yelped and jumped and looked over at Isaac. He nodded approvingly. I laughed at myself, then pulled the pieces apart with one hand.
I set up another log. I was not as physically strong as some women, but I fully understood how to exploit mass and gravity. I split the second log in three tries, and the third one in two.
Isaac broke into a real smile. “Well done.”
He showed me how to split the smaller sections. Aim for a good spot on the grain. Swing out in front of yourself. Don’t put a foot where it might get hit.
I pulled a log from the pile and set it with a dull thump on the chopping block. Then I set my feet and aimed. Crack went the ax as it found a path through the grain. The exercise took on a meditative intensity. Sweat trickled down my back. The small pieces clopped together in a pile to my right. Isaac went inside and returned, handing me a mug. Water had never tasted so good.
“You’re going to be sore tomorrow,” he said.
“I’m getting it, though.”
“Of course you are.” He smiled at me and went inside.

What was the most difficult scene to write?

Meg’s panic attacks were hard to write. Anyone who has been through anxiety or panic knows that they are very physical experiences. I would come out of writing those scenes very tense and wound up. In the beginning of the book, Meg tries to present her proof at a conference. Presenting in person is the only way she can guarantee that she will get credit and it won’t be stolen and plagiarized. She approaches it like a battle, and it doesn’t go well.

stood straight and went to the board.
“Let r be an odd prime…”
The beginning went reasonably well. I glanced over my shoulder to a room full of quizzical faces. They knew. This wasn’t about the Loading Hypothesis. Many mathematicians had attempted a proof with this opening. They knew where I was going.
“…the tensor gradient, del u, assumes a fourth-order constant of proportionality…”
My chest felt tight, but I could still breathe. So far, I was winning.
I glanced at the room again. Henry leaned to whisper something to the man on his left. Then he smiled.
Watch this. That’s what he said to that man on his left. I knew it. It’s what he always said. Watch this. When I was about to do something that would astound the room. At five. At twelve. At twenty. He loved it.
I turned back to the board and lifted my right arm, starting into the main body of the proof.
“…global representability implies local representability, however the converse does not apply…”
I would blow their minds. Exceed all expectations. I had to, or I could never come back.
My father leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. There was no halfway, and failure was death.
“…again, the Galilean invariant…”
I couldn’t get a breath. I tried to lift my chalk to the board. My heart lurched. The air shuddered, muffling sound. Shooting pain ran down my left arm, and my chest squeezed, heavy, tight.
No. Please, no.
A heart attack.
No, it’s not. Jesus Christ. How many times have you thought it was a heart attack? It’s not. It’s a panic attack. Push through, goddamn it. Push through. This is your one chance.
My hand felt cold as ice. I couldn’t speak. The murmuring in the room filtered through a dense block in my ears. The crushing weight bore down on my chest, like a black hole where my heart should have been, the most immense gravity field pulling my ribs, my muscles, even my skin inward.
Palm to my chest, I stopped.
No. For god’s sake, no. It’s not a heart attack. Push through it.
The room swayed under my feet, and an overwhelming ache bloomed inside my ribs.
It’s real this time. Oh my god, it’s real.

Would you say this book showcases your writing style or is it a departure for you?

This book is definitely my style. I’m writing something now that’s more of a departure, and I miss being in Meg’s world! I love to be really on the inside of big emotions. I love to write dialogue, and I love to craft the way two people work out their issues by talking. It’s not always easy because we have defenses and blind spots. I love looking at how those things get worked through in a conversation that borders on being an argument, but turns into an epiphany.

I also really love to dig deep into the sense of place. The two houses in this book were like characters to me: Meg’s grandmother’s big, creaky mansion, and Isaac’s one-room log cabin. The cabin was really my happy place. I love writing about nature.

What do you want people to take away from reading this book?

So many things! But I think the most important thing I want people to understand is that if you have issues with your mental health, you do not need to be fixed! You are worthy of love just as you are. Of course, we want to manage our mental health problems so we can choose the way we live and not have it chosen for us by anxiety or depression, but that’s the goal: to live as we want. Not to be fixed. And one of the best things you can do for a person who is struggling is love them, no strings attached.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have planned?

Well, Principles of (E)motion just came out on January 9th, so I’m kind of catching my breath.

The book I’m working on next is a bit of a departure for me. It involves some magical/otherworldly elements, and I’m such a realist, I keep having to remind myself, “Yes, Sara. You are allowed to do that.” But the story is still very grounded in the real world and in nature, so that gives me a little something to keep me from spinning out.

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: (1) A print copy of PRINCIPLES OF (E)MOTION (US only)

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: Meg and Isaac have had to deal with very different expectations placed on them by the people in their lives. Meg was always told she was better than others and destined for greatness. Isaac was told he was no good and wouldn’t amount to anything. These expectations wind up having a similar effect though, by preventing them from knowing and accepting themselves as they are. What effect have other people’s expectations had in your life, particularly in childhood? If you had to overcome expectations to really be yourself, how did you do it?

 
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Excerpt from Principles of (E)motion:

PROLOGUE

On the day that felt like the end, I arrived at my grandmother’s house having survived a transcontinental nonstop flight on nothing more than benzodiazepines and the kindness of a flight attendant named Parthy. I was all of twenty-three years old.
My cab pulled up behind a motorcycle parked on the street, and I got out and climbed the steps to the yard. Nestled at the bottom of a hill near a viney bend of Rock Creek in swampy DC, the grand, wooden structure had a reserved manner, set back amid four giant oaks and an acre of overgrown garden. A porch wrapped around three sides, and at the corner rose a matronly tower.
My grandmother lived there alone. It’s no wonder a person would want company in a place that big.
As I reached the porch, a man wearing a tool belt came to the front door, and my heart rate spiked. I wasn’t expecting anyone but Lila. But it only took a second to see that he was just as startled as I, which was oddly calming.
He was younger than me, but not by a lot. Taut and wiry with close-cut brown hair and a long, bony nose. He held the door open for me, and I stepped inside.
Lila’s voice carried from the back of the house. “Meggie—finally. Isaac, could you help with her bags before you go?”
I had that feeling when you have to talk to someone and you’re not ready. The sudden exposure. And I think he felt it too. He looked up, his expression flat and opaque.
His eyes were an unusual color. Reddish-brown, like cinnamon. I must have looked too close, and for a split second his defense slipped. Suddenly we really saw each other, and it surprised us both.
“This is all I have.” I motioned to my carry-on. “The rest is being shipped.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, clearly relieved.
I watched Lila approach through the big center hall with her slow, limping gait, a tiny, birdlike woman in wire-rimmed glasses, white braid hanging over her shoulder, peasant dress swirling around her ankles. She kissed my cheek and turned to Isaac.
“This is Meg. Remember I said she was coming? Meg, this is Isaac Wells.” She gave him a fond look. “He’s the only reason this old place is still standing.”
He managed a polite smile—he couldn’t have been more than twenty—looking like all he wanted in the world was to make his exit. I knew what that was like.
“So next week?” Lila said to Isaac.
“Yes, ma’am.” He nodded as he stepped out and closed the big door behind him.
When I graduated college at sixteen, the Washington Post wrote it up. Newsweek magazine ran a profile when I cracked the Karvonen Hypothesis at twenty. But no one—not the news or the gray eminences of mathematics—would be interested in this phase of my career, where I left the validating structure of academia and went into the wilderness. Where I became unaffiliated and therefore “unserious.”
Leaving my academic life behind and coming here felt like the first decision I ever made entirely for myself, but it hadn’t been exactly voluntary. The panic attacks were getting worse, and more than once I had had to cancel class. I left before I broke, though not by much.
But though I earned disapprobation with my hasty departure, I gained a single, key freedom. I could now work on Frieholdt’s Conjecture uninterrupted and without the oblique digs and outright scorn of my peers.
My father himself introduced me to Frieholdt’s when I was fifteen years old, and ever since it had been my guiding star. A fine riddle for a gifted teenager, Frieholdt’s was not considered solvable. For two hundred years it had withstood every attempt. Veteran math professors had nicknamed it the Impossible.
But not impossible for me.
As I stood in Lila’s foyer, it was as though a dry, dusty shell fractured and fell from my body. As fragile and exposed as I felt underneath, I was safe here, and finally I could breathe. No one to perform for. No one’s expectations to fulfill. Only a big, quiet house and my wisp of a grandmother. My relief was both immense and exhausting.
Lila patted my arm, her palm soft as ancient flannel. “I’m so glad you’re here. How long can you stay?”
Turns out I could stay for fifteen years.

CHAPTER ONE

The night before Lila’s funeral, I rose from my nest on the couch in my study on the third floor of the tower. I had not been sleeping well. Across the room, a damp wind blew through the open window. With both hands, I wrestled it down. The windowpanes and sashes were curved to match the walls of the tower, and they tended to stick. This one wouldn’t shut the last inch, so I gave it up, turned off the lamps and returned to my couch, pulling a throw blanket over my legs. Outside, bluish beams of streetlight illuminated the top limbs of the trees as they swayed in the wind.
Since Lila’s death, I had felt so unmoored that it was almost a physical sense of drift. After spending nearly every hour of every day spooning applesauce off her chin, drawing her ancient arms through threadbare sleeves, bathing and changing her, waking up when she cried out in the night, I felt her absence like a missing a chamber of my own heart. So I went where I always went when I needed an anchor. Back to Frieholdt’s.
My family thought I was in denial, spending the days and nights after her death closed in my study, but it wasn’t denial. It was comfort. As Lila’s needs had increased, I’d had less and less time for Frieholdt’s Conjecture, and now after all that time away, I had new perspective, like seeing it for the first time. I could feel the answer just at the extremity of my understanding.
I was also exhausted. I tugged the blanket toward my chin. Past the rain-rippled windows, the air, water, and trees all moved in apparent entropy—so much turbulence against the unmoving light—and as a mathematician’s mind tends to do, mine searched for patterns. They were always present, and always changing.
I must have slept, because I woke to dark and stillness. The fitful rain had stopped. A single cicada chirped in the top of a tree. As I ascended into a sleep-loosened consciousness, a light glinted—a bright, inner North Star—and in less than an instant I was on my feet, as awake as I had ever been in my life.
Comprehension cannot be predicted. It may come when bidden, one may struggle after it for a lifetime, or it may wait two hundred years to send its bright ray through the darkness. That night, comprehension picked me. It picked four in the morning, after a week of relentless, grief-driven focus. But it found me ready. I knew from a lifetime of training that when the ray of light appeared, I had to keep my eyes on it and not look away, no matter the consequences.
Though the rest of the third floor was a glorified attic with sloping roof and dormer windows, the tower room maintained the grandeur of the rest of the house. I paced the floor, eyes closed, head tilted up.
I forgot the emptiness of the bedroom below my feet where Lila had breathed her last breath. I followed the bright rail of my thoughts as they plunged through the darkness, skimming along, light and swift to the very center of Frieholdt’s Conjecture where I could finally see the last remaining knot. It lay within the Gault function, itself contained within the Wang-Hickman method, a central tool used to predict the motion of noncompressible fluids. The threads grew clear, loosening, almost floating.
From a bent bit of gutter, a single rivulet of water tap-tapped onto the balcony. The pattern began to form.
Turbulence: resistance. Constraint pulling inward. And in parallel, release: spooling out. The opposite of friction. Twin forces, intertwined, dancing.
Math is logic purified to its essence. And logic seeks order and sequence. Deep within that last tangle, I separated the radiant strands. I restrung them and laid them straight, end to end, and at last—at last—they formed a jetway to the center of the universe.
Feet barely touching the floor, I went to my board—five feet tall and twelve feet wide, built to fit the curved wall, with a hand-carved ledge at the bottom—and lifted a cool piece of chalk between my fingers.
*
Daylight shone through the windows when I woke, still clutching the nub of chalk.
There on my board were a series of functions and shapes in green, white, and yellow. A dimensional representation. A kind of mathematical shorthand.
At that moment, it was not something I could have presented even to another mind such as my own. Still more a small pot holder than a perfectly woven tapestry, but it was all there. So much simpler than I had imaged. As if it had been there all along—which, like all math, it had.
Done.
Twenty-three years of study. Done.
My hands trembled. I blinked, sure that it would disappear or dissolve into nonsense as it had done so many times before. I turned my back, crossed the room, and looked at it from a distance.
Still there.
I opened the window and looked out. Back in the early spring, a work crew had started a renovation on the big house across the street. Men. Trucks. Lumber. The damp smell of oak and grass wafted in. It made me think of Isaac.
I wished I could tell him I did it. I really did it. He always believed I could, if for no other reason than I believed it myself.
There’s a feeling when you meet someone, that somehow you’ve known them all your life. And not even all your life. Like you’ve known them all of some other life where you are completely yourself. Not the one you’re living, where you are who people expect you to be, but some better life. The one you should have been living all along. That’s how it was with Isaac.
No one in my family had known him except Lila, and now the memory was mine alone. And perhaps even Lila didn’t know what we became to one another.
I turned and looked at my board again. It still seemed impossible, but there it was, and the afterglow of epiphany was heaven. Breathless astonishment. A floaty, weightless feeling in my chest. I had done it. At last. And after so many years, it came in such a sudden burst of light.
This would vindicate me. It would prove that Dr. Margaret Brightwood was not a batshit-crazy recluse after all. This would vindicate the little girl who people read about in the news, who had so much power and so much promise.
A soft creak from the third-floor stairs startled me, and I jumped to my feet. No one ever came up here.
“Who is it?” I pressed a hand over my racing heart.
“Meg? Are you all right?”
The door opened, and my panic melted, replaced by that fullness of heart which so often ends in tears. Sweet Lizzie. More sister than cousin. The Sun to my Moon. Her golden hair was tied up, but a fallen strand stuck to her black dress.
I plucked the loose hair off. “What are you doing here?”
“Are you okay?” She looked at me, then scanned the room for—what? “They sent me to look for you.”
“Oh my god.” The funeral. I spun around. “Oh my god. What time is it?”
My clothes. They weren’t even pressed. I had barely slept. I ran past Lizzie and headed for my bedroom. They would all be waiting. My father. My sister. The pastor.
“Meg, you look pale.” Lizzie followed me. “First tell me if you’re okay.”
“Yes, I was—” I stabbed my arms into a black shirt. Legs into slacks. “I was working.”
They would be waiting. Expecting me to drop everything. To run and fulfill my part in this ritual obligation. I sat on the floor to pull on my boots.
But why?
Funerals are for the living. For people who want or need to grieve together. Here’s the truth. As tiny as Lila was, and as hard as she tried not to be a burden, the last years of her life had been a constant struggle, and grief had been my daily companion. I was spent.
My father had visited occasionally. The minister dropped by for a few minutes each week. And my older sister—had she even seen the inside of the house in five years? In the last months, caring for Lila had consumed everything. I slept next to her so she wouldn’t be alone.
My obligations were done. I didn’t need a funeral. I didn’t need to weep and hug a bunch of strangers dressed in black. I only wanted some time to walk the house before the sense of her presence was gone forever.
Lizzie examined me with her gentle eyes. “So…are you done? Working?”
Strong emotions competed for dominance, and extreme exultation was the first to break through.
“Yes, I’m done. I’m finally done.” But laughter gave way quickly to defensiveness. “I have been care-giving twenty-four seven. I swear to god, I haven’t had an uninterrupted hour in I don’t remember how long. And now I finally, finally have the space to think, and you know what? I did it. I did it. And I just want a few fucking minutes to enjoy it.”
By the end I was almost yelling. Then, of course, I wanted to cry. Lizzie didn’t deserve to be yelled at.
She dropped to the floor and put her arms around me. Lizzie was small, slim, and fit. Five years my junior and unfazed by my moods.
“You did what?” she said.
“Frieholdt’s. I solved it.”
“Meg, that’s amazing.”
“I miss her,” I said. “I miss her so much, but it’s been so long since I’ve been able to focus.”
“It’s all right, sweetheart.” Lizzie held tighter.
“I’m not going. I can’t.” I leaned into her embrace. “Maybe Dad’s mad that I’m not there, but he’ll see. They’ll all see that my whole fucking life was worth something.”
Lizzie kissed my cheek. “You were already worth something.”
Then she got out her phone and sent a text, leaning her shoulder firmly against mine like a mare to a skittish foal. “They can finish without us.”
“Lila wouldn’t mind. She never wanted a church funeral or a grave.”
“Plus it’s hot, and the pastor is so boring.” Lizzie put her arms around me again. “Remember when he came over and Grandma would be like, ‘Oh here comes Mr. Finkley, bless his heart.’”
I laughed, so grateful they sent Lizzie. With Lila gone, she was the one person on god’s green earth I could be myself with.
We spent the rest of the morning with photo albums, cross-legged on Lila’s big bed.
“Oh, remember this?” Lizzie held up a picture of the two of us. We were maybe eight and thirteen, standing arm in arm on a rock, a broad shining river behind us. Lizzie had been a sturdy reed of a girl, whereas I had grown curves early and stood as if I were trying to hide them. But we were both smiling and squinting in the sun.
“Harpers Ferry,” Lizzie said. “Lila walked that entire trail with us.”
“Dad didn’t want to let me go.” I took the picture and looked at it close. “But Lila made him.”
Lizzie wept, and I held her in my arms feeling only a hollowness in my throat.
I had wept when Lila started struggling after words for everyday things. When she asked me to stop the crying of a baby only she could hear. When she forgot my name.
I had nothing left.
At that moment I grieved not for the old woman, but for the young, strong Lila who hiked with me and Lizzie to the Shenandoah that day. The last and only person who could get my father off my back.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

A brilliant mind needs a strong heart.

Mathematical genius Dr. Meg Brightwood has just completed her life’s work—a proof of a problem so impenetrable it’s nicknamed the Impossible Theorem.

Reclusive and burdened by anxiety, Meg has long since been dismissed by academia. Now everyone wants to get their hands on what she alone possesses—especially her own mathematician father.

Having grown up a prodigy in a field plagued by sexism and plagiarism, Meg opts for a public presentation so there will be no doubt of her authorship. But a panic attack obliterates her plans. In defeat, she goes home and locks away the one and only manuscript of her proof.

Then chance sends her the unlikeliest of allies: Isaac Wells—carpenter, high school dropout, in trouble with the law. And the one love of Meg’s life. Fifteen years ago, they did little more than hold hands. Now, they find a tenuous space where they can love and be loved for who they are—not who the world expects them to be.

But when Meg goes to retrieve the Impossible Theorem, she finds it missing. Her fight for the achievement of the century will test the limits of her brilliance and the endurance of two vulnerable hearts.

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Meet the Author:

Before she started writing fiction, Sara got a degree in Women’s Studies from U.C. Santa Cruz. She tried the nine-to-five life for about a nanosecond before moving to rural Virginia to become a flute-maker’s apprentice and traditional fiddle player. Some years and two babies later, she returned to school for a Masters in Nursing. A cancer survivor herself, she now has the privilege of caring for cancer patients as a nurse.
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JOHANNA PORTER IS NOT SORRY, released in March 2023, was her debut novel. Her latest novel, PRINCIPLES OF (E)MOTION came out January 2024.

Sara’s short stories have been featured in The Missouri Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, and Zone 3 Press, and she has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is represented by Laura Bradford of Bradford Literary Agency.

Sara is co-host of #MomsWritersClub, a Twitter/X community and YouTube channel. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with her husband, two teens, a terrier, and three snarky cats.
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