Sarah Daniels – författare

'Gorgeously written . . . immediately hooks the reader from the early pages (the world-building is fantastic).' IndependentWelcome to the Arcadia.Once a luxurious cruise ship, now it is home to the stranded. For forty years, they have lived, and died, on the water.A place of extreme haves and have-nots, gangs and make-shift shelters, its people are tyrannized by a country they can see but can't get to. A country that says it doesn't want them.Esther is a loyal citizen, working flat-out for a rare chance to live a life on land. Nik is a rebel, intent on liberating the Arcadia once and for all.Together, they will change the future . . .WHAT READERS ARE SAYING ABOUT THE STRANDED:'A pacy, gripping read that plunges you into this near-future dystopia from the first page.''A real page-turner, with relatable characters and lots of twists and turns . . . if you loved Station Eleven this will be right up your street''This is honestly one of the best action centred books I've read in a while! Think Titanic meets The Hunger Games!.'

Trust no one.It is six months since the Arcadia set sail for the first time in forty years. But this wasn't the freedom the inhabitants were hoping for. Esther Crossland did what she had to do, but it has left a trail of destruction in her wake. Now the wrecked ship is abandoned. Its inhabitants are in exile, trapped in sprawling make-shift shelters made up of warehouse, tents, shipping containers. Esther and Nik, architects of the rebellion, are on the run. Esther is in hiding, desperate to do something to help her people, and Nik seems to have abandoned all hope, on a journey taking him further and further from home. And neither of them want to face up to their true feelings about one another . . .Not only that, there is a new villain in town. With the fall of Commander Hadley, it's left to the ruthless Admiral Janek to deal with the traitors, and her own past is beginning to catch-up with her.Then the shaky ceasefire negotiated by General Lall, Nik's mum, falls apart. Nik and Esther find themselves in a world of betrayals and double crossings - a game of power, with no one to trust but themselves.It's time for the final showdown.

Ripen Our Darkness was the play that established Sarah Daniels as a writer; The Devil's Gateway carries the flavour of life in Bethnal Green in the 1980s; Masterpieces, Daniels' most controversial play is a radical take on the porn industry and caused outrage among critics - "The play has bite, anger and tenacity and many of its arguments are true...the supreme merit of Ms Daniels' combative work is that it makes me want to argue back." (Michael Billington, Guardian) Neaptide looks at lesbianism and prejudice - "A lacerating wit" (City Limits), whilst Byrthrite is set in the 17th century, at the point when the role of the healer was taken over by the male profession of doctor, it examines the implications and dangers of reproductive technology - "Daniels puts her case with vigour and wit" (Financial Times)

Sarah Daniels is "a writer with a natural talent for disturbance" (Observer) Set in the gutting sheds of the slaughterhouse at the Cattle Market in late Victorian Deptford, The Gut Girls shows how the lives of the girls are changed when their work is made illegal - "Regarded as little better than whores by their contemporaries the gut girls are...a boisterous, beer-swilling, strong-minded bunch, handy with a knife both in the gutting shed and outside it, defiantly independent in attitude and scornful of the illusion of male supremacy." Malcolm Hay (Time Out). Beside Herself is the first of three plays in this volume that deal with women and madness - "a dramatic analogue of a contemporary social tragedy which exists on a scale we are only just beginning to comprehend" (Observer); Head-Rot Holiday commissioned by Clean Break theatre company for ex-offenders, portrays the fate of women detained in special hospitals, a euphemism for an institution for the "criminally insane" - "There is a fine, hard humour, as well as compassion, in the way Head-Rot Holdiay examines the contradictions entangling these women's lives"; The Madness of Esme and Shaz is "A weird and wondrous black comedy."(Spectator)

Elliot, a young eco-warrior, has fallen from a tree-top during a protest and now lies comatose in a hospital bed. When he fell, he slipped into the past, meeting Lucy, a troubled servant-girl and suffragette from 1913. Elliot saves Lucy's life and, by doing so, is pushed back to consciousness, but he continues to call out, in anguish, for Lucy. Alana, excluded from school for selling drugs, passionately follows all Elliot's TV news coverage and, by strange coincidence, it becomes evident that it was Alana's great-grandmother that Elliot had saved. She is able to assist Elliot's recovery as well as using the past to find peace for herself. This remarkable and timely one-act play, from the author of The Gut Girls, was specially commissioned for the BT National Connections scheme for young people in 1999.

Clean Break is a British theatre company set up in 1979 by two women in prison. It exists to tell the stories of women with experience of the criminal justice system and to transform women’s lives through theatre.Over 40 years, Clean Break has commissioned some of the most progressive and brilliant women writers to write ground-breaking plays, alongside developing the writing skills of the women they work with in its London studios and in prisons. This is a collection of monologues from this canon.Rebel Voices: Monologues for Women by Women celebrates the opportunities inherent when women represent themselves. Offering female performers a diverse set of monologues reflecting a range of characters in age, ethnicity and lived experience, the material is drawn from a mix of published and unpublished works. This book is for any performer who does not see themselves represented in mainstream plays, for lovers of radical women’s theatre and for rebels everywhere who believe that the act of speaking and being heard can create change.

“Neaptide races from domestic trauma to staff-room banter … it bursts with provocative ideas and disturbing questions about human relationships. Most important, it shows that the facade of liberalism and emancipation is merely a translucent gloss.” Jewish Chronicle Claire is a history teacher at a local school where two teenage girls have come out. Their principal, Bea Grimble, is none too impressed, and aims to have them expelled. Claire, who had been hiding the fact that she is homosexual, speaks up on behalf of the girls: this in spite of the fact that she is fighting her ex-husband Lawrence for custody of their daughter, the precocious and happy Poppy.All around Claire hardened attitudes are challenged – and confirmed – as she must decide whether to try to maintain a position of honesty, and battle hypocrisy, from within the bounds of the law, or without.A modern story of custody battles, sexual identity and gender politics, framed around the ancient myth of Demeter and her daughter Persephone.Neaptide was the winner of the 1982 George Devine Award and became the first play by a living female writer to be performed at the National Theatre, London, in 1986.This Modern Classics edition feature a new introduction by Dr Carina Bartleet.

You are not at liberty to avenge the pornography industry in this country. We have the censorship laws for that.Masterpieces opens on three couples having dinner in a restaurant, exchanging sexist jokes. The response is varied: some of them laugh uproariously, some of them uncomfortably, and one is deeply unhappy. Their domestic discussion about the morality of pornography is suddenly amplified a thousand-fold in the next scene in which Rowena is on trial for murder. She had just been to see a ‘snuff’ film in which a porn actress is actually mutilated and killed on screen, and on her way home is approached threateningly by a man who she ends up pushing under a train because he was harassing her. The play is the story of Rowena's journey, through seeing a porn magazine for the first time to a thwarted attempt to help an unhappy prostitute, from uncomfortable laughter to radical and disgusted protest at female subjugation.Masterpieces is an angry and defiant play, first staged in 1983, at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, before transferring to the Royal Court Theatre, London. It earned Daniels a London Theatre Critics Award for Most Promising Playwright.This edition introduces Sarah Daniels into the Modern Classics series and features an introduction by Elaine Aston, Professor of Contemporary Performance at Lancaster University.