It was a number one bestseller in hardback, and was named Waterstones Book of the Year 2016. Her second novel, The Essex Serpent, was published by Serpent's Tail in May 2016. In January and February 2016 Sarah was the UNESCO City of Literature Writer-in-Residence in Prague. It won the East Anglian Book of the Year Award 2014, and was longlisted for the 2014 Guardian First Book Award and nominated for the 2014 Folio Prize. Here she completed the final draft of her first novel, After Me Comes the Flood, which was published by Serpent's Tail in June 2014 to international critical acclaim. In January 2013 she was Writer-in-Residence at Gladstone's Library. In 2004 she won the Spectator's Shiva Naipaul Award for travel writing. Having studied English at Anglia Ruskin University she worked as a civil servant before studying for an MA in Creative Writing and a PhD in Creative Writing and the Gothic at Royal Holloway, University of London. Sarah Perry was born in Essex in 1979, and was raised as a Strict Baptist.

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