Sarah Holding

I offer inspirational creative experiences that free up young imaginations and deliver a lasting love of reading and writing.

sarah-holding.com

Booking enquiry

Available for

Workshop, Talk, Reading, Interview

Audiences

Age 5 to 7, Age 7 to 11, Age 11 to 14, Age 14 to 16, Age 16 to 18+, Further Education, University, Adult

Genres

Adventure, Fiction, Fiction narrative, Magical realism, Narrative, Non-Fiction, Picture book, Poetry, Science, Science fiction, Short story, Suspense-thriller

Book types

Fiction 8-13, Fiction for young-adults, Poetry, Young Adult

Organisations

Event feedback

Event went really well. Positive feedback from staff and students

Emma (Bishop Ramsey Church of England School)

Details

Having been a postman, an architect, a university professor and a community planner, Sarah Holding is now a full-time author. She lives in Surrey in a funny old house with a leaning tower with her family. She loves vegan food, good coffee and modern jazz.
Since SeaBEAN was first published in 2013, she has given workshops and talks at over 250 schools, libraries and festivals, and the popular eco-trilogy has now been republished in 2018, 2021 and in a 10th anniversary edition in 2023.
Her first YA novel Chameleon, published in 2020, is about three genetically engineered humans and is set during the fall of Atlantis, which Sarah speculates happened during an earlier period of intense climate change, 12,000 years ago.
During lockdown Sarah began writing poems for children, and on National Poetry Day 2021 she published her first anthology entitled How to Write a Poem. She has since given dozens of poetry writing workshops in schools, and loves inspiring young poets.
Sarah's second YA novel, blackloop, a sci-fi/thriller/romance came out in October 2023, and has been dubbed 'Stranger Things meets The Breakfast Club'. In November 2022 Sarah undertook a writing residency at the Arteles Cultural Centre in Finland, during which she started writing Road to True North, her 3rd YA novel which is set in Iceland and comes out on 4th September 2025.

Books by Sarah Holding

I write compelling stories and poems for our time. I am passionate about the environment and learning more about our beautiful planet, and I am now known as an author writing climate fiction or ‘cli-fi’, a genre in which changes to our climate feature strongly in the story. I’ve written an op-ed about cli-fi for Guardian Children's Books as well as giving a TEDx talk on cli-fi, entitled ‘Stories from the Future’. My books have been discussed on BBC Radio Scotland's Culture Show and widely reviewed in the Guardian and elsewhere. I love working with teachers to support their environment-themed topics and showing children how they too can write environment-inspired fiction or ‘cli-fi’. Over the last 10 years I have given talks and creative writing workshops at more than 250 schools. I’m experienced at working with children with special educational needs of all kinds, and aim to make all my talks and workshops fun, inclusive, relevant and responsive.

IBSN: 978-1916307094

Author's website

On the brink of adulthood, Olly's life has fallen apart after a disastrous summer of failed exams and first love, resulting in a police warning and a mental health diagnosis. Olly's father, Sean, decides to take him on a road trip to Iceland in order to 'fix' him. But it's not Olly who's broken; it's Sean. As they tour the country, Olly's breathtaking encounters with Iceland, and the music and friends he makes along the way, slowly enable him to regain his confidence, while Sean descends into a crisis of his own m...

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Waterstones

IBSN: 978-1911487074

Author's website

Life for Alice and the five other children living on the remote Scottish island of St Kilda was challenging enough, but when the strange C-Bean Mark 3 shows up and they discover only Alice can control it, their whole world changes. The C-Bean transports them far and wide to New York, Australia and the Amazon rainforest, and soon leads them to realise there are forces at work that have put the whole planet in jeopardy. Caught up in a dizzying whirl of time travel, where they travel by accident to the past and are th...

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Waterstones Amazon

IBSN: 9781838593698

Author's website

Shortly before the fall of Atlantis, genetic engineers create three new prototypes, Kam, Mel and Leon, the first humans to have blue eyes and shapeshifting capabilities. With climatic conditions on Earth spinning rapidly out of control, it seems the future of Atlantean civilization depends entirely on whether the three test subjects can find a way to work together to solve the deepening crisis. But first they need to find each other.

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Waterstones

IBSN: 978-1916307063

Author's website

This collection of poems for young children is about celebrating the adventure of growing up, of belonging to a family, of coming to terms with our feelings about the world around us. In lively, understated and often funny verse, Sarah Holding shares her love of words and her sense of wonder about nature. These read-out-loud poems will appeal to anyone who’s got the hang of reading and inspire them to try writing poems of their own. Written during lockdown, ‘How to write a poem’ is Sarah Holding’s first collection ...

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Waterstones

IBSN: 9781916307087

Author's website

A freak electro-magnetic pulse leaves 17-year-old Bo and six other teenagers trapped inside a building in the British seaside resort of Blackpool, desperately trying to work out what just happened, why they can’t get out, and how to survive the weirdest weekend of their lives. Dealing with each other’s egos and issues is nothing compared to the fallout unleashed by the solar event, because hidden beneath the building they discover it has activated a powerful energy device called blackloop. As blackloop starts affecti...

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Waterstones

Photos and videos

Keywords

ABLE WRITERS ACTIVE FUN ACTIVE LISTENING ADDICTION ADVENTURE ALIENS ANCIENT ASTRONAUTS ANTHROPOLOGY ARCHITECTURE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ASSEMBLY ASSEMBLY ATLANTIS AUTHOR VISIT AUTHOR-LED ASSEMBLY BOOK WEEK BOOKWORM CHAMELEON CITIES CLI-FI CLIFFHANGERS CLIFI CLIMATE CHANGE FICTION CLIMATE CRISIS CLIMATE STRIKE COLOURCHANGING COLOURFUL CHARACTERS COMING-OF-AGE CPD CREATING CHARACTERS CREATING PACE CREATING SETTINGS CREATING SUSPENSE CREATIVE CLASSROOM CREATIVE CLASSROOMS CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP CREATIVITY CURIOSITY DEVELOPING VOCABULARY DIVERSITY EARTH DAY EARTH SCIENCE EARTHQUAKES ECO ECOWARRIOR EGYPT ENHANCEMENT ACTIVITY ENVIRONMENT EXTINCTION REBELLION FAMILIES FICTION FLASH FICTION FLOODS FRIENDSHIP G&T GENETIC ENGINEERING GIFTED AND TALENTED GUARDIAN ARTICLE HOPE ICELAND IDENTITY INTERSTELLAR SPACE JOYFUL JOURNEYS KEY STAGE 1 KEY STAGE 2 KEY STAGE 3 KS1 KS2 KS3 LIBRARY OPENING LIBRARY TALKS LITERACY LITERARY FESTIVAL LONDON LOST CIVILISATIONS LOVE OF READING MAGIC PORTAL MAGICAL REALISM MIDDLEGRADE MINDMAPPING NATURE PERSUASIVE WRITING PLOT DEVELOPMENT POEMS POETRY POLLUTION PRIMARY PYRAMIDS READING ALOUD RELATIONSHIPS RELUCTANT READERS RIGHT-BRAINED ACTIVITIES ROADTRIP SAFE SPACE SCHOOL VISIT SCIENCE FICTION SCOTLAND SEABEAN SEARISE SEAWAR SECONDARY SHORT STORIES SIRIUS SOLAR SYSTEM STKILDA STORYTELLING GAMES SUCCESSFUL SETTINGS SUDDEN FICTION TECHNOLOGY TED TALK TEEN FICTION THERMOCHROMIC TIMETRAVEL USE OF LANGUAGE USING THE IMAGINATION VIVID WRITING WILFUL WORDS WORLD BOOK DAY WRITING FOR PLEASURE WRITING PROCESS YEAR 10 YEAR 11 YEAR 5 YEAR 6 YEAR 7 YEAR 8 YEAR 9 YOUNG ADULT