Sarah Tanburn

Sarah Tanburn is a sailor and hiker, activist and student and, of course, a writer. Like so many of us, she wrote continuously as a child but then life got in the way and for some years her creativity went elsewhere.

Since the millennium, she has been back in the business of staring at a screen wondering whether that comma is a good idea or why her character wants a different name. Or why the story she’s produced is somehow different from the glittering thing she imagined when lying in bed or walking up a hill, dreaming it into being – but is nonetheless rather more polished.

Sarah’s fiction has appeared in various places: including The Ocean is my Lover which first came out in 2004 and has been republished since. Switzerland won the Get Writing Cup and was featured on the National Short Story website. The First Taste is available on WiFiles and Misplaced is in the 2021 Aliens anthology from Iron Press. In 2019, her novella Hawks of Dust and Wine came second in the Rheidol Prize. That tale spawned four more, all set in the same world but with markedly different heroines and challenges.

Back in May 2023, Lady Turtle Press published the five stories as a collection under the title Children of the Land, or Plant y Tir in Cymraeg. Embedded in the beautiful Welsh landscape and drawing on the country’s rich mythology, Sarah invites us all to think about nationhood, climate change, and the power of magic in our lives. Her work has been compared to Ursula le Guin and Angela Carter: high praise indeed! If you love magical realism with a political edge, or just enjoy meeting extraordinary new women, do take a look.

Sarah is finishing a novel: Who is William Brown? is set in Wales, London, the Caribbean and at sea during the Napoleonic wars. It tells the story of a young Black woman who (according to the archives) served in the Royal Navy. Sarah has drawn on her own experiences as a mariner, a storyteller, a campaigner and a lesbian to create a new heroine exploring the sea and liberty.