Virtual Event: Sam Cohen and Andrea Lawlor

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“A bold collection that explores how we might break free from or reimagine ourselves and our places in the universe.”—Kirkus, starred review

“Reading SARAHLAND is pure pleasure – what a voice! What a constant flow of funny and vulnerable and distinct awarenesses! Sam Cohen’s writing is joyously itself and places its own keen, insightful gaze on the ways we relate to ourselves and to others.”—Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“I’m deeply struck by the emotional wisdom, the cultural smarts, the literary vulnerability and serious skills happening in SARAHLAND. Rarely do I feel so seen by a book. I gobbled this work up with feverish excitement and gratitude, and weeks later feel like I am carrying these stories around in my head and in my heart.”—Michelle Tea, author of Against Memoir

“Cohen handles her sentences, her Sarah’s, both gently and confidently. The result: a debut of equal parts ugly and beauty, a debut full of heartbreakingly real characters.” —Jean Kyoung Frazier, author of Pizza Girl

About Sarahland

“Queer, dirty, insightful, and so funny” (Andrea Lawlor), this coyly revolutionary debut story collection imagines new origins and futures for its cast of unforgettable protagonists—almost all of whom are named Sarah.

NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2021 BY THE MILLIONS * OPRAH MAGAZINE * ELECTRIC LITERATURE * REFINERY29

In Sarahland, Sam Cohen brilliantly and often hilariously explores the ways in which traditional stories have failed us, both demanding and thrillingly providing for its cast of Sarahs new origin stories, new ways to love the planet and those inhabiting it, and new possibilities for life itself. In one story, a Jewish college Sarah passively consents to a form-life in pursuit of an MRS degree and is swept into a culture of normalized sexual violence. Another reveals a version of Sarah finding pleasure—and a new set of problems—by playing dead for a wealthy necrophiliac. A Buffy-loving Sarah uses fan fiction to work through romantic obsession. As the collection progresses, Cohen explodes this search for self, insisting that we have more to resist and repair than our own personal narratives. Readers witness as the ever-evolving “Sarah” gets recast: as a bible-era trans woman, an aging lesbian literally growing roots, a being who transcends the earth as we know it. While Cohen presents a world that will clearly someday end, “Sarah” will continue.

In each Sarah’s refusal to adhere to a single narrative, she potentially builds a better home for us all, a place to live that demands no fixity of self, no plague of consumerism, no bodily compromise, a place called Sarahland.