Sarah Hall

Sarah Hall (born 1974) is an English novelist and short story writer. Her critically acclaimed second novel, The Electric Michelangelo, was nominated for the 2004 Man Booker Prize. She lives in Cumbria. Biography Hall was born in Carlisle, Cumbria. She obtained a degree in English and Art History from Aberystwyth University before taking an MLitt in Creative Writing at the University of St Andrews, where she briefly taught on the undergraduate Creative Writing programme. She still teaches creative writing, regularly giving courses for the Arvon Foundation. She began her writing career as a poet, publishing poems in various literary magazines. Her debut novel, Haweswater, is a rural tragedy about the disintegration of a community of Cumbrian hill-farmers due to the building of Haweswater Reservoir. It won the 2003 Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Overall Winner, Best First Book). Her second novel, The Electric Michelangelo, set in early twentieth century Morecambe Bay and Coney Island, is the biography of a fictional tattoo artist. The novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2004, and again for the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 2005. In France, it was shortlisted for the Prix Femina Étranger 2004.