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Sarah Bird biography

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Sarah Bird

Sarah Bird

Sarah Bird Biography

Sarah is the author of nine novels. The ninth, Above the East China Sea, was published in 2014. Sarah has been selected for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great Writers series; a Dobie-Paisano Fellowship; New York Public Library's 25 Books to Remember list; Elle Magazine Reader's Prize; People Magazine's Page Turners; Library Journal's Best Novels; and a National Magazine Silver Award for her columns in Texas Monthly. In 2012 Sarah was voted Best Austin Author for the fourth time by the readers of the Austin Chronicle; was inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame; and received the Illumine Award for Excellence in Fiction from the Austin Library Foundation. In 2013 she was selected to be The University of Texas' Libraries Distinguished Author speaker, and was featured on NPR's The Moth Radio Hour.

She has written screenplays for Paramount, CBS, Warner Bros, National Geographic, ABC, TNT, Hemdale Studio, and several independent producers. Sarah's original screenplay, Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen, is currently in development with Pantheon of Women. She has contributed articles to The New York Times, Salon, O Magazine, and is a columnist for Texas Monthly. Sarah, who moved all over the world growing up with her air force family, lives in Austin, Texas.

Sarah Bird's website

This bio was last updated on 08/10/2016. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.

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Interview

Two interviews with Sarah Bird. In the first, she describes why she wrote The Flamenco Academy and why she chose to portray the experience of obsessive love through the lens of Flamenco dancing. In the second, she discusses what it was like growing up as a 'military brat' in the 1950s and 60s, like the characters in her novel, The Yakota Officer's Club.

How did you decide to take on the subject of Flamenco for a novel?
The one subject that I always knew I wanted to write about was an obsessive love affair I had that began when I was 16 and fell in love at first sight with a deliriously handsome young man and remained so until I was 23. For years I tried to capture this experience on paper, but it always came out as a suburban melodrama.

When I was 20 and living with Beloved, I walked in on him in bed with a friend. Realizing that I had to put at least an ocean between us or I would never break free, I went to Europe. So, dazed and heartbroken, I hitchhiked and Eurailed for a year and a half. During that time I found a job as a tour guide in a botanical garden owned by White Russian émigrés on Spain’s Costa Brava. One very late night, very early morning, in a tiny club outside of Barcelona, I saw an astonishing performance of what I would learn later was flamenco.

Flamenco was the first materialization I’d witnessed that mirrored my tumultuous inner landscape. Decades later, as I was struggling to make a novel convey the experience of obsessive love, I recalled that night. The passion and intensity of flamenco, its insistence ...

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Books by this Author

Books by Sarah Bird at BookBrowse
Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen jacket Above the East China Sea jacket The Gap Year jacket How Perfect Is That jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Sarah Bird but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Peter Carey

    Peter Carey

    Peter Carey was born in 1943, in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, Australia. His parents, who had a General Motors dealership, sent him to Geelong Grammar School, one of the leading private schools, "where the children of Australia's... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Flamenco Academy

    Try:
    Theft
    by Peter Carey

  • Therese Anne Fowler

    Therese Anne Fowler

    Therese Anne Fowler is the third child and only daughter of a couple who raised their children in Milan, Illinois. An avowed tomboy as a child, Therese protested her grandmother's determined attempts to dress her in ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen

    Try:
    A Well-Behaved Woman
    by Therese Anne Fowler

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