Escalator Literature winner 2009: Sarah Ridgard

Biography:

After some years travelling and then working with Amnesty International, Oxfam and Oxford University Press, Sarah graduated from the MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia in 2002. She is currently working on her first novel Seldom Seen, a rural mystery based in Suffolk, and working towards a collection of short stories set in East Anglia. One of these short stories was shortlisted for the Mslexia national short story competition in 2009. Sarah lives in Norwich with her husband and two young daughters.

‘It’s a field that’s lost its mother,’ so Elmy said. He reckoned it was never looked after properly and then it was too late. The clay got waterlogged, turned bad, and been bloated with hunger ever after, no matter how much draining or muckspreading. ‘That’s why it was always known as Drunken Mary,’ Elmy said. ‘That’s a field that would take anyone down given half a chance. Suck your boots off and spit your buttons out after.’