Promotional Information

An award-winning debut collection from a striking new talent, named a Granta Best of Young British Novelist 2023

About the Author

Saba Sams was named as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2023. Her debut collection Send Nudes won the Edge Hill Short Story Prize 2022 and was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize 2023; her story ‘Blue 4eva’ won the BBC National Short Story Award 2022. She was shortlisted for the White Review Short Story Prize in 2019 and her work has been featured in publications including Granta, Stinging Fly and Five Dials. She is from Brighton and lives in London.

Reviews

Saba Sams is a fresh new voice in fiction, wry and sharp and raw
*EMMA CLINE*

Saba Sams is adept at wrongfooting our assumptions, creating a set of unique, multi-dimensional characters with rich internal lives
*ELIZABETH DAY*

Saba Sams’s unsettling, full-throated Send Nudes captures girls and young women on the brink of change
*GUARDIAN, Best Fiction of 2022*

Ten startlingly original stories that … seem to come out of nowhere and clamp their jaws shut around you. Exploring the uneven, hazardous terrain between girlhood and womanhood, Sams expertly reveals its inherent contradictions – the rawness and intense vulnerability of teetering on the edge of something new coupled with the power and euphoria that come with self-discovery … Sams’ unflinching observation yet tender empathy for each of her characters sets her apart as a bold new talent
*STYLIST, BOOK OF THE WEEK*

The earthy resilience and joie de vivre of these stories make for an exhilarating debut ... Sams joins the ranks of writers such as Megan Nolan and Frances Leviston with these acute portraits of the fragile intimacies and euphoric moments snatched by a generation of women coming of age into a precarious future ... In spare, rhythmic sentences, this exhilarating collection captures the light and dark of negotiating relationships, solitude, sexuality and loss
*GUARDIAN*

An ode to the women you drunkenly befriend in club toilets, Send Nudes is an astonishing selection of short stories charting the ebb and flow of girlhood. Saba Sams' authoritative yet witty tone of voice shines through, rendering this one of the most exciting books to come out of 2022
*GLAMOUR, THE BEST BOOKS COMING OUT IN 2022*

Girlhood, womanhood and everything in between. Ten glorious stories – set in clubs at closing time, pub toilets, sweaty music festivals and hazy beach holidays – of young, feral women who are navigating the complexities of growing up, friendships and truly living in their own bodies
*REFINERY29, The Ultimate Gen Z Book Guide For Surviving 2022*

A collection of short stories that speak to the female experiencer
*COSMOPOLITAN, BEST BOOKS OF 2022*

In ten quickfire stories, Brighton-born Saba Sams conjures up the spaces between lovers, the visceral attraction and the damning rejection. Read in one sitting and you’ll be transported to moments in your past, to scenes you instantly recognise but may have deliberately forgotten; a must-read for 2022
*STYLIST, The fiction books you can’t miss in 2022*

A visceral and compulsive writer, Saba Sams’ ten short stories slalom through the pulsing veins of romance, rejection, and resistance to a world that attempts to box in every young woman. Painfully familiar feelings are dredged up, but it’s so utterly compelling it can be consumed in one sitting. I have fallen in love with Sams’ feral women, found in club toilets, on beach towels, in ferocious friendships, navigating tense family dynamics and body politics
*AnOTHER, BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2022*

A razor-sharp debut
*VOGUE, BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2022*

I still remember where I was when I first encountered a Saba Sams story. She is an instinctive storyteller attuned to the ordinary details that make up a life. A highly perceptive and intelligent writer
*NICOLE FLATTERY*

Acclaimed by Emma Cline, Nicole Flattery and Megan Nolan, this debut short story collection from 25-year-old British author Saba Sams announces the arrival of a striking new talent … Wry, visceral, astute, they capture the intensity of adolescent self-consciousness and fledgling experience
*CULTURE WHISPER*

If you’ve made it your 2022 mission to cut down on screen time, there’s no shortage of brilliant new fiction to scratch the escapist itch that social media has left. Send Nudes by Saba Sams is a collection of short stories perfect for those who are pressed for time (and attention span), all focused on the world of girlhood and growing up as a woman (fans include Emma Cline and Megan Nolan)
*EVENING STANDARD, CLASS OF 2022*

Beautiful, compressed, fleeting
*SALLY ROONEY on 'Overnight'*

A roiling, raw, gut-punch of a debut collection, best read in one sitting. Sams conveys the suffocation of being and the longing to break free - from parents, partners, children, convention, your own self - in tender, spare prose. I sat motionless for about half an hour after reading them; I can't wait to see what she writes next.
*PANDORA SYKES*

Send Nudes is a seriously impressive debut. Saba Sams digs into the chaos, euphoria and menace of sexual attraction, friendship and family with bravery and wit. The balance her prose strikes between observation and empathy is remarkable, and its rhythms irresistible
*CHRIS POWER*

Saba Sams’ writing is dark and glittering. Her collection twists the world on its axis and filters it through an unsettling light. Her precise, wry sentences and sticky, uncompromising characters got beneath my skin
*JESSICA ANDREWS*

I really liked Saba Sams' spare, blunt style and her quirky take on adolescence and young womanhood. The stories covered such a wide range of moods and experiences and the various humiliations and disappointments were treated with a wonderfully clear and unsentimental eye ... I hope this collection brings her lots of new readers
*CLARE CHAMBERS*

Unfalteringly different, ensnaring, often frightening stories about characters caught between childhood and adulthood, who are feeling out their boundaries, desires and limits for the first time. Sams’ writing is intoxicating
*CLAIRE KOHDA*

In Send Nudes Saba Sams provides an alluring glimpse into contemporary life by presenting familiar experiences in entirely new and electrifying prose
*ZEBA TALKHANI*

Ten short stories about the treacherous terrain of growing up, learning to live in your body, friendships, mothers and blended families introduce a promising debut author, whose work has appeared in The Stinging Fly
*IRISH INDEPENDENT, HOTTEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR*