Sarah Gerard is the author of the essay collection Sunshine State, a New York Times critics' choice, the novel Binary Star, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times first fiction prize, and two chapbooks. Her short stories, essays, interviews, and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, Granta, The Baffler, Vice, BOMB Magazine, and other journals, as well as anthologies. Her paper collages have appeared in Hazlitt, BOMB Magazine, Epiphany Magazine, No Tokens Journal, and the Blue Earth Review. Recycle, a book of collages and text co-authored with the writer and artist Amy Gall, was published by Pacific in 2018. Her column Mouthful, published by Hazlitt, explored her relationship with food ten years into recovery from anorexia. She's been supported by scholarships and fellowships from Yaddo, Tin House, PlatteForum, and Ucross.
"The particular genius of Binary Star is that out of such grim
material in constructs beauty. It's like a novel-shaped poem about
addiction, codependence and the relentlessness of the everyday, a
kind of elegy of emptiness."
--New York Times Book Review "Told in sparkling, lyrical prose,
Sarah Gerard gives us the story of two lovers who, on a road trip
across the U.S., do their best to rid themselves and each other of
the sicknesses they've picked up along the way."
--Vanity Fair 'Best Books of 2015 for Gifting...and Hoarding'
"Gerard has written characters, in lyrical and deeply affecting
prose, who are burned out and burning up what substance they have
just to be known to each other."
--Vanity Fair "In [Binary Star], Gerard's unnamed,
semi-autobiographical protagonist goes on a road trip that's at
first an escape, then an odyssey, then an extended metaphor for a
tragic metamorphosis. Gerard has channeled her trials and
tribulations into a work of heightened reality, one that sings to
the lonely gravity of the human body."
--NPR 'Best Books of 2015' "Remarkable... Partly novelistic, partly
poetical, partly meditative, Binary Star is a beautiful inversion
of these rudimentary, astronomical demonstrations, where bodies
stand not as replacements for planets or asteroids or gravitational
pulls, but where stars and black holes and galaxies stand, instead,
for bodies."
--The Millions "[Binary Star is] an intense, poetic, deeply
original look at bodies, consumerism, and the way we strive to
connect with one another, even through distance and
dysfunction."
--BuzzFeed 'Best Fiction 2015' "One of the breakout American
independent books of the year. Gerard handles her subject
matter--the cavernous nature of relationships, politics, the
material and psychological condition of the body--with the care of
an author who refuses to write down to her readers."
--Flavorwire 'Best Independent Press Books 2015' "One of the finest
debuts I have read, a daring and epic novel of love and lost
souls."
--Largehearted Boy 'Favorite Novels 2015' Binary Star tops this
list of '40 Books Published in 2015 That Should Be On Your
Shelf'
--Luna Luna "Counterbalancing its heaviness, the prose also
achieves a certain ecstasy of lightness, of breathless possibility.
If the narrator herself is stagnant, it's the stagnancy of spinning
eternally on an established orbit. Binary Star suspends us in this
state, and our stomachs lurch only when the ride stops."
--The Rumpus "Probably the best thing about Binary Star is that its
strong social critique, while wrapped in a very personal story, is
enough to turn it into a narrative that matters beyond its
entertainment value. A quick, brutal, and unflinchingly honest tale
of death and consumption in contemporary America."
--Sundog Lit "The narrator's response to her pain is nuanced, and
scorched with honesty, even as lies litter the pages. Gerard's
prose is too beautiful, too aware of the potential of poetic
pacing, for wallowing."
--Full Stop "Rhythmic, hallucinatory, yet vivid as crystal. Gerard
has channeled her trials and tribulations into a work of heightened
reality, one that sings to the lonely gravity of the human
body."
--NPR "A novel that takes risks, both in style and subject matter.
A serious literary work."
--Electric Literature "In this fictionalized love story about two
troubled young people dealing with eating disorders and drug abuse,
Gerard weaves real-life social issues into an otherworldly tale, in
which the vast universe above serves as a guiding force in the
pursuit for clarity."
--Refinery 29 "The story is propelled by Gerard's prose, which
mirrors the narrator's sleep-deprived, thought-accelerated state.
The sentences accumulate with manic intensity, painting a portrait
of a young woman who's incapable of seeing things clearly and has a
better understanding of stars that are light years away than of the
workings of her own body."
--San Diego City Beat "A vibrant, addictive display of prose.
Gerard enacts a nearly Kathy Acker-esque intensity in her diction,
invoking styles at times clipped and maniacal, like Artaud, other
times siren-shriekingly transcendent or trauma-shocked-out
calm."
--Blake Butler, Vice "Gerard's sharp debut novel takes on
addiction, dysfunction and eating disorders in a surreal and
haunting road trip across America."
--San Francisco Chronicle "Binary Star shines even as it charts the
breaking apart of worlds and the spiral-in of events, and is a
special recommendation for the surreal poet-turned-reader who will
find its scientific links to psychological states of mind to be
inviting."
--Midwest Book Review "It's remarkable... [Binary Star's] triumph,
and its uniqueness, is in bringing us to tears over a great mess of
intertwined ideas."
--Flavorwire "The language moves through darkness and lightness,
between being and unbeing, between past and future. But its center
is always in the present. It is the only space where you can exist
and disappear at the same time. Gerard leaves you there."
--Entropy Magazine "Fast-paced, visceral, and distinctly tragic,
Binary Star is a must read for anyone curious about what it means
to be a body in space."
--Interview Magazine "The book has the cool detachment of Joan
Didion's Play it As it Lays and the formal experimentation of Harry
Mathews' best work."
--Nerve "Binary Star dazzles and sings in the best of ways."
--GawkerOne of the "Six Best Books of January."; "Our indie pick of
the month."
--GQ"Sarah Gerard's debut, Binary Star, radiates beauty. Gerard
captures the beauty and scientific irony of damaged relationships
and ephemeral heavenly lights. Just as with the stars, it is
collapse that offers the most illumination."
--Los Angeles TimesOne of "27 of the Most Exciting New Books of
2015."
--BuzzFeed"With the grace of a poem and the attitude of a punk
anthem, Binary Star is an unusual treasure. Sarah Gerard is a young
writer on the rise. She has a voice you have to hear to
believe."
--Bustle"Gerard has a reputation for tackling her subject matter
with unusual ferocity."
--The Millions"Gerard writes fiction like poetry, constructing a
mesmerizing, complex story of addiction, obsession and love."
--Time Out New York"A glittering novel that tears into the
headspace of a young anorexic in love with an alcoholic. Gerard's
spare language and spacing is an intimate, cinematic poem."
--The Brooklyn Rail"Gerard's first novel, Binary Star, is one of
the most hotly anticipated arrivals of early 2015."
--Brooklyn Magazine"Sarah Gerard's lyrical prose is like nothing
you've ever read--and the same can be said for the arresting Binary
Star, too... it kind of blew apart my mind."
--Bustle"Gerard has produced a powerful, poetic, and widely
relatable novel that eludes easy classification."
--Publishers Weekly (Starred)"Sarah Gerard has an interesting
fearlessness."
--VICE"Sarah Gerard's star is rising."
--The Millions"Fascinating... unlike anything else out there."
--Brazos Bookstore blog"One of the finest debuts I have read, a
daring and epic novel of love and lost souls."
--Largehearted Boy"[Binary Star] feels like it's going to dismantle
itself on the next page or sentence, yet somehow Gerard is always
in control, building up to a perfect and explosive ending."
--Fanzine"A bold, beautiful novel about wanting to disappear and
almost succeeding. Sarah Gerard writes about love and loneliness in
a new and brilliantly visceral way."
--Jenny Offill"I felt a breathless intensity the whole time I read
Sarah Gerard's brilliant Binary Star. I sped through it, dizzy,
devastated, loving all of it."
--Kate Zambreno"Two lost souls hurtle through a long dark night
where drug store fluorescents light up fashion magazine headlines
and the bad flarf of the pharmacy: Hydroxycut, Seroquel, Ativan,
Zantrex-3. Gerard's young lovers rightly revolt against the insane
standards of a sick society, but their pursuit of
purity--ideological, mental, physical--comes to constitute another
kind of impossible demand, all the more dangerous for being
self-imposed. Binary Star is merciless and cyclonic, a true and
brutal poem of obliteration, an all-American death chant whose
chorus is 'I want to look at the sky and understand.'"
--Justin Taylor"Allegorized by the phenomena of binary stars, Sarah
Gerard's first novel confronts the symptoms of modern living with
beauty and courage."
--Simon Van Booy
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