"[SARAHLAND is] an ambitious work, to be sure, but the structural leaps it takes are more than earned, and Cohen’s prose is something to be celebrated all on its own. — Vogue
"Sam Cohen's stories re-wire the brain. Enter into this multiverse of Sarahs you didn't know you knew, and you'll come out the other end thinking only in Sarahs, only of Sarahs. Sarahland is satisfyingly queer, dirty, insightful, disarmingly generous, astonishing in its craftsmanship and so funny. Easily one of my favorite collections of short fiction ever!" —Andrea Lawlor
"The tilted, weird world of SARAHLAND is nothing short of revolutionary. Cohen gives a polyphonic voice and a kaleidoscopic face to the exuberant possibilities of modern identity. Hilarious and groundbreaking, I felt bereft when I finished reading, sad to leave the sealed brilliance of Cohen's whirring brain. Every story is outrageously smart, every line of prose unabashed, surprising, and blistering with style." —Kimberly King Parsons
"Sam Cohen’s SARAHLAND is a potent revelation. Reading these stories feels like the ground shifting, the world cracking open, and viewing this magical transformation with brand-new eyes. This is a gift that that only brilliant writers like Cohen can give us; fiction that shines a bright light on how we live but, more important, how we could, if only someone would illuminate how. Cohen does this, shatters the suppositions of gender and sexuality with all her Sarahs, bright lights that show us the way." -Dana Johnson
“Ludic, provocative, and endlessly surprising. . .Cohen challenges preconceived ideas of how we become the people we are, what it means to define ourselves, and how it is possible, and preferable, to break free from the compromises we make." —Refinery29
"Reading SARAHLAND is pure pleasure - what a voice! What a constant flow of funny and vulnerable and distinct awarenesses! Sam Cohen's writing is joyously itself and places its own keen, insightful gaze on the ways we relate to ourselves and to others." —Aimee Bender
"[E]ccentrically inventive...[a]part from the heroines' shared name, what really unites these wondrous pieces is Cohen's prose, as vibrant and unruly as lipstick smeared after a wild night out." —Oprah Magazine
"Sarahland is weird, wonderful, and unforgettable." —The Advocate
"[Sarahland] provides a search for self within every story, showing there is more to life than our own personal narratives." —Lambda Literary
“A spectacle of dazzling, hilarious details comprise the worlds of these stories. SARAHLAND illuminates, in bright neon, the pain and challenge and joy and triumph of forming and reforming identity and community. I felt every moment of this book deeply.”—Jac Jemc
"At times cheeky and tender, this debut short story collection pushes boundaries of identity and origin, queerness and community.” —Ms. Magazine
“I'm deeply struck by the emotional wisdom, the cultural smarts, the literary vulnerability and serious skills happening in SARAHLAND. Rarely do I feel so seen by a book. I gobbled this work up with feverish excitement and gratitude, and weeks later feel like I am carrying these stories around in my head and in my heart.” -Michelle Tea
"When viewed as a whole, Cohen’s collection is a unique, special experience, like being queer and speaking to a queer person for the first time in your life. Exciting, intimidating, and overwhelming, Sarahland is a book that makes you happy because it exists." —Paperback Paris
REVIEWS
“I loved Sarahland. Like the best fiction, it both articulated and deepened what were for me previously unspeakable, but urgent mysteries, including why feminine and/or feminist utopias are always half-beautiful, half-grotesque; how the world ends; and where American class aspiration and the quest for freedom meet, which is to say, what a Jewish girl from the suburbs who wants out is chasing, what she’s fleeing, and how far she can really get.”—LA Review of Books
"A bold collection that explores how we might break free from or reimagine ourselves and our places in the universe." —Kirkus, starred review
“These stories abound with pop culture references and gossip, transformation, soft science fiction and fantasy, and a recurring interest in dolphins. Not just dolphins; the Sarahs and not-Sarahs in this book often find themselves in communion with—even becoming—more-than-human people: horses, trees, cat women, crows, life-sized Barbie doll sorority girls, creatures from earth’s multi-million-year future, even Mother Nature herself, and God, too.”—FF2
“Cohen’s stories charge one another with their overlap until we understand that Sarahs are basic, transcendent, and primordial all at once…Sarahland is Tempur-pedic, and its characters collapse while the stories take perfect form around them, caring for them tirelessly, finding words for their desires, whatever they may be.” —Michigan Quarterly Review
“The stories themselves push the expectations of storytelling, venturing into the fantastical. Cohen embraces the bizarre, and often leverages it against the ordinary. Sarahland is a uniquely premised collection successfully corralling a varied assortment of ideas into a singular, unified statement.”—Chicago Review of Books
“Cohen’s language and her arresting use of simile show her power as a writer, but it is Cohen’s uncontained, vivid imagination that makes Sarahland unusual…On par with Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,”…“Becoming Trees” is the parable for our time. Sarahland is a book to read and savor; Sam Cohen, a name to watch.” —Jewish Book Council
“A psychedelic plunge…Cohen has a gift for staging heavy emotional topics in dreamlike scenes, both feeding into one another and creating a whimsical host of meaningful visuals. Encapsulates that anxious desperation to be liberated—from who we are told we are, from ecological collapse, and from the capitalist delusion that any of it is isolated from a whole. —SPINE Magazine
"Cohen cleverly reimagines the world through a queer lens and uses pop culture and fairy tale references to illustrate the various lives, stories, and worlds the Sarahs can inhabit. A thought-provoking work, Cohen’s collection surprises and excites." —Publishers Weekly
“Sarahland is still just a ton of fun to read—at turns thought-provoking, funny, strange and exhilarating. With Sarahland, Cohen has asserted herself as a worthy contemporary of Ottessa Moshfegh, Elif Batuman and Carmen Maria Machado.” —PureWow
"Each Sarah is a revitalization of how stories are told and how our stories as humans shape us. Cohen showcases how unbelievably unique and talented she is. Her mind offers stories we seem to be familiar with but allows them to stretch to unexpected places." —Debutiful
"Sam Cohen’s debut book of short stories is an expansive multiverse in which various iterations of a Sarah slide their fingers in the grimy mulch of being, sifting through, eating, and vomiting out what they find there." —Bomb Magazine
“The book’s intimacy and vulnerability reminded me why I love to write. What was more astonishing, for me, was that the stories opened up possibilities for how to live. It was a gift to find myself in these pages.” —Split Lip Magazine