Sarah Blake is the recipient of a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her writing has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Threepenny Review, Slice, and elsewhere. She lives near Philadelphia, PA.
Named a best book of 2019 by O, The Oprah Magazine, Thrillist, BookPage, Entropy, and HeyAlma. [A] wild and superbly intelligent reimagining . . . It also left me with an abiding admiration for the writer's charged powers of imagination. -Joan Silber, New York Times Book Review An urgent feminist response to the Old Testament. . . . Blasphemous, carnal and committed to exaltation, Naamah delivers its truths in a torrent of heresies [and] dares us to center the experience and wisdom of women. -The Washington Post A dreamy and transgressive feminist retelling of the Great Flood from the perspective of Noah's wife as she wrestles with the mysterious metaphysics of womanhood at the end of the world. -O, The Oprah Magazine A shimmering and visionary feminist debut . . . Naamah is hallucinatory, full of unearthly visions, and yet boldly, vividly embodied. It is a singular and timeless portrait, a deep and gorgeous contemporary evocation of an ancient woman asking unanswerable questions about the end of an existing world. -San Francisco Chronicle Naamah is the feminist bible retelling we need in 2019 . . . Blake ultimately succeeds in making this woman of antiquity feel of our times, offering no easy answers to the many questions Naamah poses. -Paste Revelatory, ethereal and transfixing, Naamah cracks open the ancient tale of Noah. . . . In the tradition of Madeline Miller's Circe, Naamah plucks a female character from myth and imbues her with sexuality, personality and intimacy, making her an altogether more modern hero. -Bookpage A powerhouse of a debut. . . . With prose as luminous and heady as it is grounded in Naamah's strong physicality, Blake creates a complex woman in a complicated yet terrifyingly simple situation. -Electric Literature Retellings can be magical when deployed correctly. Such is the case with Sarah Blake's debut novel, Naamah. Naamah is the wife of the Biblical Noah (of ark-building fame), and the book tells her story, from her perspective, in refreshingly modern prose. . . . It's extremely hard to put down; I blew through it in two days, happy to be lost in this world and this woman. -Guernica Historical and mythical women . . . are getting due reconsideration in pop culture. Sarah Blake does something similar with the story of Noah's Ark, reconstructing that well-known tale around the woman by Noah's side. -Elle Poetic and lush . . . It's suspenseful and it's erotic and it's funny, and it just charmed me to pieces. -Liberty Hardy, Book Riot Glorious . . . Blake's prose is bewitching, and this narrative is an essential correction to the Bible's male-dominated mythology. -Nylon, 50 Books You'll Want to Read in 2019 Blake's lyrical prose sweeps over the reader as inexorably as the water around the ark, but her genius is in making Naamah's life as relevant as if she were alive today. The reimagining of this patriarchal tale into a feminist allegory is a stunning achievement, sure to intrigue fans of Circe and Home Fire. -Shelf Awareness A poetic debut of biblical proportions. . . . [In] mesmerizing prose poem-esque sections, the novel explores themes of sexuality, purpose, loss, love, and faith. -Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Sarah Blake's dazzling novel Naamah offers a new vision of storytelling and belief, rendered through the body of a woman. In this beautiful reconception of a flood, Noah's wife emerges as an earth-bound soul savior as well as a desiring body capable of generating epic myth. In between hope and hell, and up against the divine, Naamah reminds us that the bodies and voices of women were always the heart of the story. Naamah is a new myth-making triumph. -Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Book of Joan and The Small Backs of Children No longer a forgotten name, Naamah is achingly alive here, pulsing with questions and desires. Sarah Blake's prose is sensual, hallucinatory, dream-sharp-a beguiling debut from an immensely talented writer. -Leni Zumas, author of Red Clocks