Sarah Ridgard

After some years travelling and then working with Amnesty International, Oxfam and Oxford University Press, Sarah graduated from the MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia in 2002 with a distinction. One of her short stories was shortlisted for the Mslexia national short story competition in 2009. Sarah lives in Norwich with her husband and two young daughters.

Her debut novel, SELDOM SEEN, was published by Random House in August 2012.

 

Praise for Seldom Seen:

SHORTLISTED FOR THE AUTHORS’ CLUB BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2013 

LONGLISTED FOR THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE 2013 AND THE 2013 NEW ANGLE PRIZE FOR LITERATURE

With its drunken farmers and tongue-wagging wives, the rural Suffolk community of Ridgard’s debut novel is privy to some outlandish goings-on. Fortunately for the reader, the young narrator, Desiree, is witness to most of these scandals. Haunted by the body of a discarded baby she finds in a ditch, she decides to untangle the mystery surrounding the corpse; as she does so, her family and the village gradually come apart around her.
– Sunday Times

‘With its drunken farmers and tongue-wagging wives, the rural Suffolk community of Ridgard’s debut novel is privy to some outlandish goings-on. Fortunately for the reader, the young narrator, Desiree, is witness to most of these scandals. Haunted by the body of a discarded baby she finds in a ditch, she decides to untangle the mystery surrounding the corpse; as she does so, her family and the village gradually come apart around her.’ Sunday Times

‘Ridgard’s evocation of landscape, of farming, its seasons, cruelties and epiphanies, is striking’ The Guardian

‘Sarah Ridgard has created such a wonderfully evoked and fully-realised world – the earthy Suffolk landscape she describes is like a character in itself. The strange, dark, brooding atmosphere will stay with me for a long time’.  Gerard Woodward, author of the Booker shortlisted I’ll Go to Bed at Noon.