Sarah Denley writes deeply researched historical fiction: her protagonists are uncelebrated, ordinary people who lived through trauma or conflict.
Sarah is currently completing her first novel, which recreates the true lives of a brother and sister who are separated during the Second World War.
The novel imagines their profound coming-of-age stories, traversing the mountains of the Italian Abruzzo, the deserts of North Africa, and the fenlands of East Anglia.
About Sarah…
In fiction writing, 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.
Sarah’s experience as a researcher drives her ambition to write stories that detail major historical events through the viewpoints of those that 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.
