Promotional Information

Bitches on Comics podcast Comic of the Week, Broken Frontier Book of the Week, Turnaround UK Graphic Novel of the Month, Herald Scotland Best Graphic Novel of the Year 2019, Pop Matters Best Nonfiction Books of 2019, JoAnn Purcell’s Top 10 Go-to Graphic Novel List 2021

About the Author

Sarah Lightman is a London-based artist, curator and writer. She completed an Art Foundation course at Central St Martins, attended The Slade School of Art for her BA and MFA, where she won The Slade Prize and The Slade Life Drawing Prize, and has a PhD from University of Glasgow in women's autobiographical comics. She has extensively published her research. Her artwork has been exhibited in museums and galleries internationally.

Sarah co-curated Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women, an internationally touring exhibition of 18 comic artists, that opened at 9 museums over 6 years. She edited Graphic Details: Jewish Women's Confessional Comics in Essays and Interviews (McFarland 2014), that was awarded The Susan Koppelman Prize for Best Feminist Anthology (2015) and The Will Eisner Award for Best Scholarly Publication (2015), an Association of Jewish Studies/Jordan Schnitzer Book Award for Jews and The Arts (2016).

Sarah has experience teaching and lecturing at undergraduate and graduate level including at the Universities of Glasgow (2018 and 2011-12), Roehampton (2011, 2012, 2018) and London College of Communications (2017). She has acted as an External Examiner for an MA at California College of the Arts. In addition, Sarah has led comics workshops at the Jewish Museum, London (2018), Glasgow Jewish Book Week (2018), JW3, the Jewish Community Centre for London (2012, 2013) and Koffler Centre for the Arts, Toronto (2011). She has also convened a Comics Study Day at The Slade School of Art (2014) and will be teaching at The Art Academy, London, in 2019.

Sarah also chaired the Women in Comics Conferences in 2009 and 2010, and, in 2009, co-founded Laydeez do Comics with Nicola Streeten, the most influential comics forum in the UK.

Reviews

‘A wonderful, absorbing, enjoyable book. I love the biblical reference—this is a sacred book. It’s like making a new intimate friend AND it will help people who have been through their own rites of passage or need to. I love it.’ – Philippa Perry; ‘Ambitious and moving… the artwork is a triumph.’ – Dr Zanne Domoney-Lyttle, Literature and Belief; ‘As a non-religious person I just love religious narratives, I find it so interesting when they call their religion to account. [Sarah Lightman] grapples with her religion, her art, her mental state. It's messy, but it's the most beautifully curated form of “messy”. It has such a powerful overall impact as a book, I really do think about it a lot. It's profound.’ – Bitches on Comics Podcast Comic of the Week; ‘My world is enriched, is tangibly better, because The Book of Sarah is a part of it.’ – Dr Arial Kahn, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Middlesex University; ‘The Book of Sarah constitutes a valuable contribution in contemporary women’s graphic memoirs. It is an intimate graphic memoir that can potentially allow readers to understand the protagonist’s struggles at the same time as identifying parts of their own past and present experiences in her story. Lightman’s unique drawing and lettering style also presents a new version of what the comics form can be.’ – Olga Michael, IABA Students and New Scholars Network; ‘The Book of Sarah is not your typical graphic novel.’ – Kylie Ora Lobell, Jewish Journal; ‘Deeply absorbing… truly haunting art… what will most enthral readers is [Sarah Lightman’s] luminous imagery, beautifully rendering her intimate relation to everyday objects, indelible aspects of family life, religion and culture.’ – Ranen Omer-Sherman, Jewish Book Council; ‘Sarah Lightman’s gorgeously constructed memoir features shaded images with stunning pops of colour.’ – Jewish Book Council; ‘Her lyrical and candid confessionals question and resolve how family, religion and art have shaped her, from Jewish Orthodoxy to feminist Judaism, from daughter to mother, from longing to belonging.’ – Paul Gravett, Jewish Renaissance Magazine; ‘The Book of Sarah is a story of one woman’s journey which will resonate with anyone who has struggled to achieve authenticity and power as a person and as an artist. Its honest, nuanced content can spark analysis, comparisons, and identification. Physically, the book is handsome, a hard-covered volume with silky gloss paper and full colour art.’ – Mom Egg Review; ‘The book is a joy to read. If you are expecting cartoon-like characters, speech bubbles and lots of images on every page, you will get a surprise. Each page contains reproductions of [Sarah’s] beautiful art works, mostly intricately realised pencil drawings as she explores her life in a highly original manner. I found the drawings of the more banal subjects perhaps the most moving —a succession of pages showing the foods she eats in moments of stress or the packet of Osem chocolate covered wafers that she bought for her dying grandmother.’ – Julia Weiner, The Jewish Chronicle; ‘The Book of Sarah is both a comfort and inspiration to anyone who wants to know how to belong as an artist to a family, a culture, and a religion.’ – Jewish Art Salon; 'Lightman proves herself not simply an accomplished artist, but specifically an accomplished comics author. While the art world is full of excellent artists who could fill a similarly sized book with equally well-crafted drawings, few have the comics savvy to construct the sort of complex narratives and image-text relationships that Lightman achieves in The Book of Sarah.’ – Chris Gavaler, Pop Matters; ‘It is a remarkably candid piece of work, but also remarkably sophisticated in the way it plays off word and image, makes them echo and harmonise and sometimes clash.’ – Teddy Jamieson, Glasgow Herald; ‘Engaging and accessible… I really loved this book and found it hard to put down.’ – Abigail Morris, Director, The Jewish Museum London; ‘Wow. I am sitting here with tears in my eyes, having just finished The Book of Sarah. What an accomplishment this is! Necessary reading for anyone interested in graphic non-fiction, Jewish feminism, literature and motherhood, London writing – actually, just for anyone. Read it!’ – Christine Ferguson, Professor of English at the University of Stirling; ‘Sarah Lightman’s long-anticipated project is here and it’s been well worth the wait. Exploring the complexities of families, feminism, Judaism, motherhood and art this genuinely distinctive graphic narrative provides a fresh approach to autobio comics in a book that is deeply personal but always relatable.’ – Andy Oliver, Broken Frontier; ‘An astounding work of insight and clarity… so eloquently expressed, especially the family's long-standing tradition of stifling ambition, autonomy and independence - thereby thwarting so much potential - that it almost broke me. It will resonate with so many, helping to show them that they're not alone.’ – Stephen Holland, Page 45; ‘So many of us are given an identity by our tribes and families that doesn't quite fit for us and it is quite hard sometimes to find our way to who we want to be and how we want to live. This courageous graphic memoir will resonate with anyone who has grappled with this, or wants to.’ – Philippa Perry; ‘In Lightman’s skillfully layered visual memoir, the biblical matriarch is summoned “out of the shadows” by her namesake. She is given renewed voice, reanimated and heard through Lightman’s own story.’ – Victoria Aarons, Trinity University; ‘A beautiful, resonant, gallery of a graphic memoir.’ – Turnaround Graphic Novel of the Month; ‘Love the artwork, courageous and so many layers to it.’ – Gnash Comics; ‘Through a delicate interweaving of images (ranging from the architectural, loose outlines, fractured repetitions and empty spaces) and text, the reader becomes immersed in this deeply considered reflection of gender and cultural identity. In its spirit of perpetual enquiry, it is an intensely Jewish book; but the questions it asks, about being and belonging, speak to the wider concerns of twenty-first century life.’ – Dr Ruth Gilbert, University of Winchester; ‘The Book of Sarah is absolutely beautiful. I love the format – it seems incredibly fitting that The Book of Sarah is a visual book. The drawings and paintings are very potent. It’s so moving to see such intimately domestic moments collected and sanctified.’ – Leah Vincent, author of Cut Me Loose: Sin and Salvation After My Ultra-Orthodox Girlhood and the co-author of Legends of the Talmud, a collection of illustrated children’s stories; ‘I have loved reading this book. It's packed full of the most wonderful drawings. I could quite happily keep browsing through them page by page in admiration and delight (with a tinge of envy too!). But The Book of Sarah is also bound seamlessly together by the most compelling narrative about a young women’s struggle to gain a sense of entitlement. Entitlement to be an artist, entitlement to be a mother, entitlement to have an equal and loving relationship. This is an important feminist book – as well as a real joy to read, and to own.’ ¬– Bobby Baker; ‘I love The Book of Sarah. This is a deeply layered work, from the elegant, evocative writing to the diverse range of materials - charcoal, oil paint and watercolour as well as graphite pencil. The Book of Sarah is a memoir that is rich with revelations for the reader to uncover.’ – Professor Samantha Baskind, Cleveland State University, author of Jewish Artists and the Bible in Twentieth-Century America, co-editor of The Jewish Graphic Novel; ‘The Book of Sarah is an extraordinary treasure. The paintings and drawings are luscious and incredibly evocative, with the visceral quality of the thick paint and the layered graphite. The writing is heartfelt and honest, searching and tender. In The Book of Sarah art and words come together to chronicle a self-in-becoming: precarious and sometimes delicate, but, like a tenacious plant sending out tendrils of new growth, this memoir is simultaneously filled with powerful, gripping revelations of strength.’ – Maureen Burdock, UC Davis and author of The F Word Project: Five Feminist Fables for The 21st Century; ‘Sarah Lightman’s beautiful début combines delicate artwork with a riveting narrative about being a daughter, becoming a mother, and learning how to be a person in the world. I loved this subtle memoir about Judaism, feminism, bad dates and good books, the families we are born into and the ones we make.’ – Dr Ariela Freedman, Concordia University, and Segal award-winning author of Arabic for Beginners; ‘A stunning piece of work. The power of the book lies in the atmosphere created by a kind of distilled emotion in the words, alongside the very haunting images. The sense of place and associated emotions are very memorable.’ – Dr Ann Miller, joint editor, European Comic Art; ‘The real power in the work comes from Lightman’s wit and imagination, which has a lightness that belies the seriousness of the existential questions within.’ – Nadia Valman and Rachel Garfield, Jewish Quarterly; ‘I love Sarah's work. Visually stunning, rich, complex, nuanced and moving. So excited for this to come out.’ – Dr Ariel Kahn, Roehampton University; ‘From daughter to mother, from the Slade to Hampstead, Sarah Lightman traces her journey from modern Jewish orthodoxy to feminist Judaism. Her acutely sensitive, full-page pencil drawings are accompanied by hand-written commentaries questioning how family, religion, art and life have shaped her.’ – Paul Gravett for The Bookseller; ‘Brilliant… Sarah Lightman, a London-based comics artist and scholar, has established herself within this continuously expanding group of brilliant women cartoonists, whose valuable work can help readers better understand distinctly female experiences of (“failed”) motherhood, belonging and exclusion, trauma and survival, and mental illness and healing . Lightman’s unique drawing and lettering style also presents a new version of what the comics form can be... The Book of Sarah constitutes a valuable contribution in contemporary women’s graphic memoirs.’ – Olga Michael, IABA Students and New Scholars Network; ‘Highly recommended.’ – Sheryl Stahl, Association of Jewish Libraries 'News and Reviews’; ‘A beautifully illustrated coming-of-age story, The Book of Sarah moves through the author/subject's life, examining her path from orthodox Judaism to her own, feminist version of her faith.’ – Bustle; ‘Not every autobiographical comics artist is driven to create their own private book from the Bible. Sarah Lightman’s motivation came from her brother and sister having the Book of Daniel and the Scroll of Esther named after them, but there was no Book of Sarah, until now.’ – Paul Gravett, Art Review