Sarah Perry | |
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Born | Chelmsford, Essex, England | 28 November 1979
Occupation | Writer |
Alma mater | Royal Holloway, University of London, Chelmsford County High School for Girls |
Chancellor of the University of Essex | |
Assumed office 1 August 2023 | |
Vice Chancellor | Anthony Forster |
Preceded by | John Bercow (vacant 2021-2023) |
Website | |
www |
Sarah Grace Perry FRSL (born 28 November 1979) is an English author. She has had four novels published:After Me Comes the Flood (2014), The Essex Serpent (2016),Melmoth (2018) and Enlightenment (2024). Her work has been translated into 22 languages. She was appointed Chancellor of the University of Essex in July 2023, [1] officially starting in this role on 1 August 2023. [2]
Perry was born,the youngest of five sisters,in Chelmsford,Essex,into a family of devout Christians who were members of a Strict Baptist church. Growing up with almost no access to contemporary art,culture,and writing,she filled her time with classical music,classic novels and poetry,and church-related activities. She says this early immersion in old literature and the King James Bible profoundly influenced her writing style. [3] She attended Chelmsford County High School for Girls. She married her husband Robert Perry at the age of 20. She graduated from Anglia Polytechnic University (now Anglia Ruskin University) with a degree in English Literature then worked briefly in the Civil Service.
Perry has a PhD in creative writing from Royal Holloway University where her supervisor was Sir Andrew Motion. Her doctoral thesis was on the Gothic in the writing of Iris Murdoch,and Perry has subsequently published an article on the Gothic in Aeon magazine. [4] [5]
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 2013, she was a writer in residence at Gladstone's Library. [6]
Perry won the 2004 Shiva Naipaul Memorial prize for travel writing for 'A little unexpected', an article about her experiences in the Philippines. [7] [8]
In June 2018, Perry was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in its "40 Under 40" initiative. [9]
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 . [10] 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". [11]
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 novel is again written in a gothic style, and explores themes of goodness, friendship, superstition, and love and once again received positive reviews; John Burnside, quoted on the book's cover, writes: "Had Charles Dickens and Bram Stoker come together to write the great Victorian novel, I wonder if it would have surpassed The Essex Serpent? No way of knowing, but with only her second outing, Sarah Perry establishes herself as one of the finest fiction writers working in Britain today." [12]
The Essex Serpent was nominated in the Novel category for the 2016 Costa Book Awards [13] and was named Waterstones Book of the Year 2016. [14] It was placed on the long list for the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. [15] It was adapted for a limited series on Apple TV+ in 2022.
Her third novel is titled Melmoth, and was inspired by Charles Maturin's gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer . [16] It was published by Serpent's Tail in October 2018. [17] Melmoth was shortlisted for the 2019 Dylan Thomas Prize. [18]
Perry's fourth novel, Enlightenment, was published by Cape in May 2024. The Times Literary Supplement called it an "uplifting perspective on the relationship between faith and facts" and "a delicate piece of misdirection." [19] It was longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize. [20]
The Booker Prize, formerly the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a prestigious literary award conferred each year for the best single work of sustained fiction written in the English language, which was published in the United Kingdom and/or Ireland. The winner of the Booker Prize receives £50,000, as well as international publicity that usually leads to a significant sales boost. When the prize was created, only novels written by Commonwealth, Irish, and South African citizens were eligible to receive the prize; in 2014, eligibility was widened to any English-language novel—a change that proved controversial.
Ruth Barbara Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, was an English author of thrillers and psychological murder mysteries.
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John Burnside FRSL FRSE was a Scottish writer. He was one of four poets to have won the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Poetry Prize for one book. In Burnside's case it was for his 2011 collection, Black Cat Bone. In 2023, he won the David Cohen Prize.
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The Essex Serpent is a 2016 novel by British author Sarah Perry. The book is the second novel by Perry and was released on 27 May 2016 in the United Kingdom through Serpent's Tail, an imprint of Profile Books.
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The Essex Serpent is a British gothic romance period drama miniseries based on the novel of the same name by Sarah Perry. The series was written by Anna Symon, directed by Clio Barnard, and starred Claire Danes and Tom Hiddleston in the lead roles. It premiered on Apple TV+ on 13 May 2022.
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