Sarah Gerard

Sarah Gerard is the author of the essay collection Sunshine State, and the novel Binary Star. Her short stories, essays, interviews, and criticism have appeared in the New York Times, T Magazine, Granta, The Baffler, Vice, and the anthologies Tampa Noir, We Can’t Help it if We’re From Florida, and One Small Blow Against Encroaching Totalitarianism. Nina is a struggling writer, a college drop-out, a liar, and a cheater. More than anything she wants love. From the burned-out suburbs of Florida to the anonymous squalor of New York City, she eats through an incestuous cast of characters in search of it: her mother, a narcissistic lesbian; Odessa, a single mom with even worse taste in men than Nina; Seth, an artist; Brian, whose roller-coaster affair with Nina is the most stable “relationship” in his life; and Aaron, an aspiring filmmaker living at home with his parents. True Love (Harper) brings us into Nina’s quest for fulfillment and it’s a tale at once darkly comedic, acerbically acute, and painfully human. Publishers Weekly noted that “Gossip, sexual desire, and the uncompromising economics for aspiring artists guide the action in Gerard’s lurid, captivating tale [with] an arresting feminist layer. Gerard’s unflinching look at youthful desperation marks an exciting turn in her work.”