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| photo: Kate Dollarhyde | |
Sarah Gailey is a Hugo- and British Fantasy Award-winning author of speculative fiction, short stories, and essays, including Magic for Liars, Just Like Home, The Echo Wife, and Upright Women Wanted. They have written comics for Marvel, EC, and BOOM! Studios. They are the editor and publisher of the newsletter Stone Soup and the essay series Love Letters: Reasons to Be Alive. Their novel Make Me Better (Tor, May 12, 2026) is an eerily seductive look at the desire for community connection and self-improvement.
Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:
The best version of you is within reach. All you have to give up is your sorrow. At Kindred Cove, they'll show you how.
On your nightstand now:
The Little Friend by Donna Tartt. I've been revisiting her work recently and it's been such a treat. Also, Gifted & Talented by Olivie Blake, which is exactly the kind of gossipy family drama I need right now.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton was a big hit for me. I think I was probably drawn to the idea that a piece of construction equipment can be your friend, and to the idea that you can solve the problems you have created for yourself and your loved ones if you make yourself economically useful. Those are both themes three-year-olds are into, right?
Your top five authors:
I will read anything by Tana French, and I will read it the day it comes out.
H.A. Clarke, who is also published as August Clarke, writes incredible, confrontational, irresistible books. Metal from Heaven is a book I greet as a friend when I see it in the wild. I have a parasocial relationship with that particular book. I feel like I know it personally, even though it is a book and is concerned with its own affairs.
This is hard! Why are you making me do it!
Clive Barker is a legend of horror for a reason. His work shaped me as a reader and a writer. His work for young readers is celebrated, but not enough. The Thief of Always is a master class. The first paragraph alone is something I meditate on when I want to feel like I'm watching the moon landing happen live.
Kate Dollarhyde is one of the greatest writers I have ever encountered in my life. Her work makes me feel the most wretched, visceral, necessary emotions. Her short fiction is transformative, and her narrative design instincts knock me flat on my back.
Hm. One left. Impossible choice, but:
I will go with Gloria Naylor, who wrote Mama Day, which is one of the best books I have read and, I know for a fact, is one of the best books I will ever read. Her power over language is otherworldly. I know it must have been hard-won, that kind of skill always is, but it reads as effortless in the way of the masters.
Book you've faked reading:
Oh, this one's awful--The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. When I was a teenager, I overheard some college kids at a bookstore talking about it, and I figured it must be a book that really, really smart people read. When I think back on the conversation I was eavesdropping on, it's obvious that they were just posturing for each other, trying to seem smart and interesting in their pretension. But at least they read the book they were being pretentious about. Can you imagine a 13-year-old telling you how much they loved The Fountainhead? Mortifying. I was also trying to get into hats at the time, with an equal level of dignity.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Why Fish Don't Exist by Lulu Miller, which I think everyone should read.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Honestly, about half the books I buy in person, I buy for the cover. I am a simple animal; I love going into a little bookshop and looking for ripe fruit in the bushes. I bought The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld because of the cover. I didn't even peek at the flap before I bought it. I just wanted that cover in my house. The Ones We're Meant to Find by Joan He also snagged me with the cover. I love a good cover. I buy wine based on the label. More fun, maybe, to talk about books I love that have absolutely terrible covers--but no, I shan't be evil. We will pretend those don't exist.
Book you hid from your parents:
None! It was never necessary. They never told me there were things I shouldn't or couldn't read. Like all kids, I self-selected out of books that weren't right for me, like the really steamy romances--I vividly remember thinking "All this lady cares about is 'members,' whatever those are! Boring. I wonder if there's a new Goosebumps out yet?"
Book that changed your life:
Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles by Mark Russell and Mike Feehan. Yeah, that Snagglepuss. This is a graphic novel that reimagines Snagglepuss as a closeted playwright during the McCarthy era. It's stunning and sad and slapped me right in the heart. Comics can be this! Books can be this! Unbelievably beautiful and brilliant and unexpected.
Also, The Godfather by Mario Puzo, which I have reread every year for the past 20 or so years; Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen, which I suspect was instrumental to my eventual radicalization; Seven Demons by Aidan Truhen, which reshaped my approach to prose; and Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel, which shocked me awake as a writer in a moment when I was professionally drowsy.
Favorite line from a book:
"The great grey beast February had eaten Harvey Swick alive." --first line from The Thief of Always, Clive Barker
Five books you'll never part with:
The Godfather by Mario Puzo (I have two copies just in case)
Jade City by Fonda Lee ("What if The Godfather was nine billion times better on every conceivable axis")
The Lucius Beebe Reader as compiled and edited by Charles Clegg and Duncan Emrich
Codex Seriphinianus by Luigi Serafini
We Found a Hat by Jon Klassen
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Abhorsen by Garth Nix. I can't remember a time when I hadn't read it. I feel like I was born reading it. I wish I could encounter it for the first time.