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= Sara Taylor = Dr Sara Taylor FRSL (born 1988) is an American British novelist whose work explores social constructs including identity, family, and sexuality.

Early Life and Education
Born in October 1988, Taylor is a product of Virginia and the homeschooling movement, before attending college, they painted houses, demonstrated open hearth cooking for museums, and opened a café. After receiving a BFA in Creative Writing from Randolph Macon Women's College, Taylor went on to undertake a MA in Prose fiction at the University of East Anglia in 2013. In 2017, Taylor completed a dual focus PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of East Anglia with a thesis on the censorship of U.S. public school literature textbooks in the twentieth century in response to conservative Christian activism, and the way that this censorship has impacted education.

Career
Taylor's first novel, The Shore, published by Penguin Random house in the UK, Hogarth in the US, and Bond Street Books in Canada, follows the lives of several generations of residents of a remote series of islands as they come into conflict with the landscape, each other and themselves. The Shore explores the concepts of gender and responsibility, the limits of loyalty and the complications of relationship over the span of 300 years. It was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award and the Golden Tentacle for debut speculative fiction as well as longlisted for the Baileys Women’s prize.

in 2016, Taylor published their second novel, The Lauras, which starts with Ma pulling the narrator, her 13 year old teenager called Alex, onto a road-trip across North America guided by a map of places and people from Ma's life before motherhood. At the same time Alex’s coming-of-age narrative unfolds, each new state prompting stories and secrets. Helen Dunmore described The Lauras as "a fine achievement, engrossing, original and eloquent"

While at UEA they co-founded Seam Editions, a publisher presenting creative critical writing online and in print. They were an Eccles Centre writer in residence at the British Library in 2019, and conducted research on eugenics in America, involuntary sterilisation, and the impact of both on vulnerable populations. In 2020 Sara became a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund.

They were elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018 as part of the 40 under 40 initiative.

Books

 * The Shore (2015)
 * The Lauras (2016)

Awards

 * 2015: Shortlisted for the The Guardian First Books Award
 * 2015: Shortlisted for the Sunday Times/ Peters Fraser & Dunlop Young Writer of the Year
 * 2015: Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize
 * 2015: Shortlisted for The Kitschies’ Golden Tentacle Award
 * 2017: Shortlisted for Royal Society of Literature Encore Award
 * 2017: Shortlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize