Sarah Langan ’96 Creates A Better World
In a departure from her early-career success in horror, Langan is now dabbling in science fiction
Sarah Langan ’96 understands reinvention.
An award-winning writer who carved her early-career niche crafting popular horror novels, Langan faced a crossroads after her third book landed with a thud and she suddenly couldn’t find a publisher for her next novel.
“Everyone turned it down,” she said. “It was probably the lowest point of my career and one of the lowest points of my life. I had a hard time. I was really upset.”
One of her daughters, then 8 or 9, set her straight. “She said, ‘Mom, it doesn’t matter what others think about you. It matters what we think about you and what you think about you.’ And of course, she was right.”
With her daughter’s pep talk motivating her, Langan felt empowered to refocus her writing career and reinvent herself as a writer. After winning three Bram Stoker Awards from the Horror Writers Association signifying superior accomplishment in the genre, Langan transitioned into futuristic writing that borders on science fiction.
In leaving her comfort zone, she found her future.
“I love horror. I love sci-fi. And I love fantasy. I guess I am trying to blend those into something unique,” she said.
Her latest, A Better World, is a dystopian suburban noir novel about a near-future family who sacrifices everything in return for what they thought would be a safer, better life in a walled-off company town, isolated from the chaos of the world they left behind. But it doesn’t work out that way, and the family soon realizes it entered a society akin to a cult.
Published by Atria Books in April, A Better World has received many high-exposure reviews, including in the New York Times and on NPR, and Langan spent much of her spring and early summer promoting the book at readings and events across the country. In August, she will travel to Scotland to appear at Worldcon Glasgow, the 82nd world science-fiction convention.
This is her second book for Atria, a division of Simon & Schuster. Her previous book, Good Neighbors, was her first foray into futuristic writing, and its success enabled her to pursue A Better World.
A Better World challenged her because she had to create a new world from scratch. The idea for the book germinated during the isolation of the pandemic, and the story evolved from being about a couple seeking to escape a frightening, threatening world to being about society at large finding a new way forward—indeed, an idealized better world.
“There was so much world-building in this one, and it needed to be good and correct in the way that good science fiction and fantasy are, but accessible to people who do not like the genre. I wanted it to be more universal, and there was a ton of work involved in that,” she said.
Langan, who lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two daughters, trusted her instincts as a writer and storyteller as she jumped into the manuscript. She admitted to feeling “moments of terror” when she got the edits back and wondered aloud, “Who is going to want to read this?” But those fears dissipated with the release of the book and the positive early reviews.
Coming to Colby to write
Langan grew up on Long Island, N.Y., and chose Colby because she knew she wanted to be a writer and was drawn to the College’s creative writing program. An English major with a concentration in creative writing, she studied with published authors Zacamy Professor of English Debra Spark, Jennifer Finney Boylan, and Rick Russo, and during her senior year she completed an independent study with Susan Kenney, now the Dana Professor of Creative Writing, Emeritus.
“That is when I finally felt comfortable saying that I wanted to be a writer,” she said of working one-on-one with Kenney and attributing her success to the feedback and insights she received from all her professors. After graduating in 1996, she enrolled at Columbia University, where she received her M.F.A. in creative writing. She tacked on a master’s in environmental health science/toxicology from New York University, as well.
The master’s in environmental health was her backup, in case writing did not work out. “That way, I knew I could work and write on the side if I had to,” she said.
Writing did work out.
Her first book of horror fiction, The Keeper, came out in 2006. She followed that a year later with The Missing, which included a scene set at Colby. Her third book was Audrey’s Door, released in 2009. Her writing was also included in best-of-the-year round-ups and anthologies.
Between 2006 and 2009, she was nominated for four Bram Stoker Awards and won three, signaling her ascent to the top of the horror genre. Then the market turned. She kept writing—short stories, film scripts, another novel—but found no takers for her fiction until she returned with Good Neighbors in 2021.
With the faith of her family supporting her, she never gave up, and she found her new niche in creating futuristic dystopian worlds.
“I am really happy with the way things have turned out,” Langan said. “I am writing all the time, and once in a while, someone publishes something. I can’t complain.”