sarah maria griff

friends, here is the cover of Eat The Ones You Love, with a stunning original illustration by @anano__ which perfectly captures the feel and secrets of this book. thank you so much to @torbooks for bringing this beast alive in the US, and to @katiejaneklim for her gorgeous design work. isn’t she lovely? isn’t she terrible? she’ll be available on april 22nd, 2025 🌱👁️🌱 #bookstagram #books #sff #reading #horror #instagood #writersofinstagram

friends, i have some news. i spent much of the last two years working on this book in private, holding onto it like a life boat. a beloved friend once told me that you have to write the book that makes you feel good, and everything not saved was that book. i have a lot to say about how incredible this journey has been, writing this book while holding the baby in my arms, crowded over a laptop or one handed into my phone, swearing to her that i would build her life out of books. i have so much to say, but no idea how to say it, just yet. i can only tell you that this whole experience has felt like pulling a sword out of a stone 🤍 #books #bookstagram #explore #authorsofinstagram

hello friends. STRANGE IS THE LIGHT is coming in september, and i’d like to tell you a small bit about it. the first image is the beautiful cover, pulled out of the ether by @anano__ & @katiejaneklim - four cardinal points, one island, one dice, a sky that gets bright and strange. it speaks so keenly to the pulpy, weird heart of this book. i love it. the next images here were taken in 2015 on valentia island, the real island where this highly made up story is set. jumpscare for a very young griff, there. one of my oldest & best friend’s family live down there and i would write in their home every year for a while. they took great care of me, much madder back then by far than i am now. the girl in that picture is full of dreams and the woman writing this post feels very, very far away from her. i was writing my first novel at that time, and the way the night and day meet at odds down there due to some mad geographic magic was the nexus of what would ultimately be this book, over a decade later. it is about a group of friends. it is about secrets. it is about play. it is about magic. it was once a book about a summer but it is now a book set over thirty years. there is, of course, a monster. i have never worked so hard on anything in my life. ultimately, I think, it is a book about love. if you pressed me to condense it, it is basically the vibe of the secret history if it was played by the cast of skins going through some godawful reality breaking in the vein of season one of stranger things. it owes more to stephen king’s it than any of those other works i just pointed to. it’s been with me so long that i have no idea how to describe it. i’ll learn, though. two characters from Eat The Ones You Love show up, briefly, though it is not a sequel: it is a member of the family. the final pictures here are of deck chairs and a Virgin Mary, and both of these places have very important scenes in the book. idk lads. i’ll tell you more about it very soon. i can’t wait to share it with you. it comes from @torbooks & @titanbooks and is available for preörder wherever you get your fine volumes of fiction 👁️✨🏝️ 🎲 #bookstagram #writersofig #explore #bookcover

Strange is the Light follows a passionately entangled group of childhood friends, fractured by the betrayals and secrets kept as they grew into adulthood. Now, after twenty years, Daphne, Ronan, Leonie and Finn will finally have to face the consequences of cutting their last adventure short—having accidentally opened a rift into a dangerous alternate dimension while playing a mysterious RPG version of their childhood game. Daphne never took her final turn... And there is a debt that must be paid. Coming 09/08/2026! ✨

They might be done with the game... but it isn't done with them. Sarah Maria Griffin, acclaimed author of Eat the Ones You Love, returns with STRANGE IS THE LIGHT! 🎲 A childhood game of wild imagination takes a frightening turn in this dark, strange, moving tale of intense friendship, tangled secrets and betrayal… Coming 8th September! 👁️ #TitanBooks #SarahMariaGriffin #StrangeIsTheLight #ComingSoon

@wnbooks has pre-empted Everything Not Saved – a "multi-layered mystery, an earth-shattering love story and a meditation on the power and beauty of storytelling, in art and life" – by Irish Book Award-winning author Sarah Maria Griffin (@sarahgriffski ) 💫 🔗 in bio.

We are incredibly proud to welcome Sarah Maria Griffin to W&N with her new novel, EVERYTHING NOT SAVED 💫 From the acclaimed author of EAT THE ONES YOU LOVE and OTHER WORDS FOR SMOKE, EVERYTHING NOT SAVED is a multi-layered mystery, an earth-shattering love story, a meditation on the power and beauty of storytelling, and a love letter to friendship, community and – of course – video games. Publishing Director Alexa von Hirschberg said: ‘Wildly original and beautifully written, this absorbing, clever and wise novel about grief, desire and fandom hooked me in and kept me glued to the page – Sarah Maria Griffin is an exceptional storyteller and EVERYTHING NOT SAVED will be a major lead title for W&N.’ 🎮 Coming spring 2028! 📰 Read the full story at thebookseller.com

We are delighted to announce that Titan Books will be publishing the latest novel from the Irish Book Award-winning Sarah Maria Griffin! ✨ STRANGE IS THE LIGHT follows Daphne McSharry and her beloved friends, Ronan, Leonie and Finn. They spend their holidays together on Valentia Island, returning year after year to one game of their own making, letting their imaginations roam free. But when the game is stolen from them by an outsider, it becomes something dark and strange, forcing Daphne to make a choice with a terrible cost. When tragedy brings her back to the island years later, she and her friends finally have to face the consequences of what she did. Daphne never took her final turn... And there is a debt that must be paid. Here’s what @sarahgriffski has to say: “Strange is the Light is a novel that I have been working on for a decade, a genre-bending story about coming of age and the secrets people use to control one another. It’s also about play, and what happens when an imaginary world is weaponised back against those who created it.” Coming September 2026! 🌠 [ #TitanBooks #SarahMariaGriffin #StrangeIsTheLight #ComingSoon ]

one more swing around the sun for all of us, one more year of posting the lemon pig poem. make an effigy, make a wish, it’s almost over 🍋✨ #nye

some of 25 🌱✨

hello friends, one for the grid. i’m overjoyed to tell you that i’ll be starting as the @artscouncilireland fellow in trinity college in the new year. getting this news was a lift that truly lit up the end of this season, and set 2026 up with a lot of optimism and work to be done. i’m excited to get in and get to business: i believe very strongly in making sure that i can be as useful as possible to writers at the start of their journeys, because there are a handful of people who were far ahead of where i was who did the very same for me when i was setting out, too. i want to be helpful, and it’s a huge honour to get to do so in this context in particular. maybe i’ll write a trinity novel, yet. my headshot was taken by @drewcommajames on a hot day in covent garden, quite some time ago. i think if there was ever a time to use it, it’s now 🤍✨ more news soon. i’ve got a book for next autumn to tell you all about x 🏝️✨

hello friends. the irish book awards and the library association of ireland have nominated me for their author of the year award. time to get very sincere here, sorry for the wall of text. it’s a very specific honour to be nominated by librarians, readers and book clubs. to have your name come up at this level is bananas. much of writing is profoundly isolating, and publishing and putting a book into the world is opaque at best. you have, most of the time, no idea if you’re doing it right or if you’ve just chosen a mad, unpensionable career with no mat leave. if you’re just shouting into the void. especially with the kind of work i make: the tricky to categorise, the more than a little offbeat. this is a firm reminder that it’s not just me and the books, far from it. to be recognised at a shortlist level by librarians and the readers who engage with the public libraries is profoundly meaningful for me - i haunted libraries for years. like, years. i wrote much of my body of work in them - my 2026 novel was my primary project during my residency in the DLR library back in 2018. i wrote spare & found parts in the noe valley library in san francisco. other words for smoke in the national library’s reading room. libraries are the last free spaces we have - they offer literature at no cost to the general public. they are a stronghold of progressive thinking, which is critical at a time like this in ireland, wherein marginalised groups find themselves targeted by violent mobs, and trans people are facing a seismic level of systemic oppression founded in absolute ignorance. libraries offer solidarity, free spaces, and crucially: books. during this strange season where the heat from the burning world feels like it is bearing down on us, books and reading are critical in resisting the dark that is blowing in on the wind. librarians put books into people’s hands, every single day. so look. that they put mine into enough people’s hands that i ended up on this list is incredible. what a thing. so look, if you’d like to throw me a vøte, you know where to go. up to the lînk in me bïǒ, or over to the @irishbookawards website. 🏳️‍⚧️🤍✨