Sarah has a scholarly background, completing a PhD in American literature in 2010.  Her academic focus is American Romanticism, and she taught literature and American culture at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge and The University of East Anglia in Norwich. She has published articles for academic journals, and chapters for books related to the Romantic philosophy of light, and on Herman Melville.

Sarah’s experience as a researcher drives her ambition to write stories that detail major historical events through the viewpoints of those who lived through them. She turns to personal accounts, such as diaries, interviews, and memoirs, as a guide to the authenticity of lived experiences, exploring how ideas about the truth can shift and pivot. Her characters are immersed in a strong sense of environment, where the geographic and atmospheric landscape is at play with the development of the characters and story. Her writing explores emotional competency, familial relationships, and the kinship that is born out of shared adversity or conflict. 

When reading fiction, Sarah looks for a period of history, or a subject, that has potency and so gives rise to a narrative layered with ideas, offering complex emotional or interpretive scope.