Sarah Catherine Knights is a British novelist, short story writer and photographer. She has written five novels: the Aphrodite Trilogy, made up of Aphrodite’s Child, Now is All There Is and Shadows in the Rock and also the standalone novel, Love is a State of Mind. Life Happens was published on May 26th, 2022 and she’s now published the sequel, Life’s Complicated. She is also working on a collection of short stories.
Sarah has lived in the beautiful town of Malmesbury since 1985. She came to Wiltshire, like so many others, because her husband was in the Royal Air Force at Lyneham.
Sarah’s main interest is obviously writing but she reads avidly and always has a book on the go: Clare Chambers, Ann Tyler, Kristin Hannah, Elif Shafak, Matt Haig, Jeanine Cummins, Meg Mason are just a few of the authors she’s read in the last few months. She also loves modern music and listens to Coldplay, Sam Smith, Billie Eilish, Tom Walker, George Michael and Ed Sheeran, just to name a few! On the active side, she loves walking, swimming (in the sea if possible, but she does lengths in the pool to keep fit) and going to the gym; she spends hours ambling through the surrounding fields with her black labrador, Mabel and as she walks, she thinks about her next writing project. Sarah’s always had dogs and couldn’t imagine life without one.
Sarah studied English Literature at Birmingham University from 1972 to 1975, did a postgraduate certificate of teaching immediately afterwards and went on to do a Creative Writing MA at Bath Spa University in 2012. It was here that she started writing her debut novel, 'Aphrodite's Child' which was self-published at the beginning of 2014.
The story grew out of the family's posting to Cyprus with the RAF in the early nineties. While there, Sarah realised it would make a great setting for a novel – with its microcosm of English life, the camp was a strange place to live. At that time, there was little or no communication with the UK and being somewhat cut off from the island too, life inside the camp became intensified. It sometimes felt like a prolonged Mediterranean holiday with dramas thrown in. It was easy to dream up a fictional storyline.
Having been an English teacher of both secondary level children and foreign business people, Sarah has now retired to concentrate on photography and writing. Her three children have flown the nest but often come home for chaotic weekends of dog walks, laughter and noisy meals around the large kitchen table. Her oldest daughter now lives in San Fransisco with her husband and three young children so they were sorely missed during the pandemic. Sarah and husband Peter have visited several times and can’t wait to go back. Her son lives in London and is a photographer and musician and her youngest daughter lives in Brighton and is about to become a detective.
The whole family, especially Peter her husband, have been very supportive and patient with Sarah's late career change as a novelist, always willing to help with the plot or reading a new draft.
Sarah regrets not finding writing earlier in life but is certainly making up for lost time now.