Sara Cooper

Sara Cooper is a novelist and an award-winning playwright-lyricist. She lives in New York with her husband John and their son Theo. Major awards include Richard Rodgers Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters (2022); ASCAP Foundation Lucille and Jack Yellen Award (2021); Grand Jury Prize, Barnstorm Media (2020); Jonathan Larson Grant, American Theatre Wing (2014).

Ravenous, her debut novel, was a Finalist for the 2025 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

Ravenous is the word that I think best describes the story: our protagonist, Breigh, is ravenous for food, both because she's pregnant and because she is literally starving herself to stay thin while pregnant; she's ravenous for items, because she is a compulsive shopper and unboxer; she's ravenous because she is chronically, endlessly unfulfilled; the baby, who is a character, is ravenous because it's growing; and we are all ravenous because we, as consumers (willing or not), are trapped an endless loop of buying and overconsumption. It's a story about capitalism and what it does to our bodies and minds.

What's in a name?

I noticed a very specific trend: former classmates of mine, fellow elder millennials, who go by only their first and middle names on social media and who try to sell me things on Facebook. This really tickled me, and, thus, Breigh Marie was born.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?

Not very, I think. My work has always been weird and dark. My 9th grade English teacher made me stay after class one time because she was worried about me based on a short story I had written (it was just fiction, Mrs. M! But thank you for your concern!). So, yeah, this seems like the eventual course my fiction would take.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

I actually tend to know both the beginning and the ending before I start to write. This is my first full-length novel, but I've spent my professional life to this point writing for theatre, and that's always been the way I work. I like to have an opening and closing image, and then I work from the outside in. I generally find myself rewriting the end a few times, but only to tighten it; the idea generally stays the same, and the it's the middle that gets the most rewriting structurally.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

I am very, very, very different from Breigh. That being said, I suffered from fairly severe postpartum depression, so I understand and empathize with her very deeply.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Alt rock music from the 90s; that sound is at the core of my soul.

Visit Sara Cooper's website.

My Book, The Movie: Ravenous.

The Page 69 Test: Ravenous.

Writers Read: Sara Cooper.

--Marshal Zeringue