News
The Novels
Helm (2025): Critics hail its ingenuity and experimentation.
George Monbiot: “A truly astonishing thing, this book, so vivid that you keep wondering how she could have been witness to all those events, from the Neolithic onwards. Then you remember she made them up.”
Cumbria Life: “Book of the Month.”
BBC Radio 4: Take Four Books – “Helm – and its connections to three other books.”
Literary Hub – “Novels you need to read this fall.”
The Guardian: “The biggest books of the autumn – Helm.”
BBC Radio Cumbria: “Since childhood, she believed the Helm had a personality.”
The Guardian: “If you only read one book, make it Helm.”
Financial Times: “As vital, fierce and free as the phenomenon it describes.”
The Spectator: “It pushes both the boundaries of the novel and our relationship with nature.”
The Observer: “A mighty epic of climate change in slow motion.”
The Scotsman: “An accomplished book that could well win prizes.”
The Independent: “★★★★★ – Helm will sweep you off your feet.”
Marie Claire: “A wide-ranging narrative filled with hope and awe.”
Field: “A haunting, multi-millennial tale of the mysterious wind.”
Daily Express: “A darkly witty antidote to your usual nature writing.”
New Scientist: “One of the best new fiction books of August 2025.”
The i Paper: “You can always rely on Hall to blow you away.”
The Bookseller: “Critics hail its ingenuity and experimentation.”
Kirkus: “A monumental literary tribute to the interconnection, as old as time, of weather and humanity.”
The Guardian: “Environmental fiction is booming – Hall shows how it can move beyond dystopia.”
The Times: “Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s book for the summer holidays.”
London Review of Books: “An epic ecofictional fable from a show-stopping genius.”
The Observer: “The Helm Wind was like a childhood friend.”
The Observer: “Extract: “A Balloon Ride.”
The Irish Times: “Predictably superb.”
Publishers Weekly: “Readers will be swept away by Hall’s ambitious and daring narrative.”
The New Statesman: 25 books to read in 2025: Helm by Sarah Hall.
Guardian: “Incandescently good.”
Burntcoat (2021): a lush intensity, with a quality akin to Marilynne Robinson.
Guardian: “Best of the year.”
Irish Times: “One of the best books of the year.”
Guardian: “Best of the year.”
New York Times: “A striking pandemic novel.”
South Bank Sky Arts Awards: Shortlisted.
National Book Critics Circle Awards: Finalist.
Dublin Literary Award: Longlisted.
The Times: “Among the best new paperbacks.”
The Wolf Border (2015): Praised for its sharp politics, its wolves as wild symbols of freedom and return.
Guardian: “Shortlisted for the James Tait Black fiction prize.”
Telegraph: “Shortlisted for the South Bank Show Literature Award.”
How to Paint a Dead Man (2009): A meditation on art, memory, and mortality.
The Booker Prize: Longlisted.
The Guardian: “Hall’s use of language is remarkably rich and intense.”
Carhullan Army (2007): A dystopian feminist fable compared to Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
The Guardian: “A near-future struggle that feels all too close.”
The Electric Michangelo (2004): Admired for its bold exploration of art, flesh, and mortality.
The Guardian: “Booker-shortlisted, audacious and visceral.”
American Academy of Arts and Letters: “Awarded the E. M. Forster Award.”
Haweswater (2002): Show-stopping genius, melancholy, emotionally powerful.
The Guardian: “Everyone should buy this novel.”
The Short Story Collections
Sudden Traveller (2019): Stories spanning borders and bodies, charged with displacement.
James Tait Black Prize: Shortlisted.
Edge Hill Prize: Longlisted.
BBC National Short Story Award: “First writer to win the award twice for ‘The Grotesques.’
American Society of Magazine Editors: Finalist for The Grotesques.
Madame Zero (2017): Visceral, transformative, intimate with the uncanny.
O. Henry Prize: Winner for Goodnight Nobody.
Edge Hill Prize: Readers’ Choice Award.
The Guardian: “Exceptional short stories.”
Los Angeles Review of Books: “A perfect balance of language and content.”
Times: “Best books of 2017.”
Gordon Burn Prize: Longlisted.
East Anglian Book of the Year: Best fiction.
The Beautiful Indifference (2011): Hall distills menace and desire in exquisite, cutting prose.
BBC Short Story Award: Winner for Mrs Fox.
Edge Hill Prize: Winner.
Readers’ Award: Winner.
Guernica Magazine: James Salter “admires.”
The Guardian: “Dark, fierce and sensual.”
Other news
Forward Prizes for Poetry
Shortlist announced with Sarah Hall as Chair of Judges.
Celebrated author Sarah Hall serves as 2025 Chair of Judges.
The Bookseller
Faber applies “Human Written” stamp to Sarah Hall’s Helm in anti-AI initiative.
The University of Manchester
Acclaimed author Sarah Hall joins the Centre for New Writing.
Lancaster University
Receives honorary Doctor of Letters for outstanding literary contribution.
Humanists UK
Welcomes novelist Sarah Hall as one of three new patrons.
University of Cumbria
Appointed Professor of Practice.
Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize
Sarah Hall serves as Chair of Judges in 2018; prize awarded to Kevin Jared Hosein.
Booker Prizes
Served as a judge for the 2017 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.
Royal Society of Literature
Elected Fellow.
Sarah Hall
Sarah Hall is one of the UK’s most talented authors. Twice nominated for Man-Booker Prize, the first and only writer to win the BBC National Short Story Award twice, she has written 10 highly acclaimed novels and short story collections.
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