Sabrina Imbler
Author of
How Far the Light Reaches (Little, Brown, 2022)
Dyke (Geology) (Black Lawrence Press, 2020)
Sabrina is currently a staff writer for Atlas Obscura. Before that, they wrote for Wirecutter, a product review site owned by The New York Times. They have held internships and fellowships at Audubon, Grist, and Scientific American.
They are also a 2019 Margins fellow at the Asian American Writer's Workshop, a 2018 Yi Dae Up fellow at the Jack Jones Literary Arts Retreat, and the inaugural Jane Hoppen resident at Paragraph NY.
Books by Sabrina Imbler
How Far the Light Reaches (Little, Brown, 2022)
One of TIME’s 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the Year
PEOPLE Best New Book
A Barnes & Noble and SHELF AWARENESS Best Book of 2022
An Indie Next Pick
One of Winter’s Most Eagerly Anticipated Books: VANITY FAIR, VULTURE, BOOKRIOT Publishers Weekly Starred Review
An utterly original, lyrical collection of essays about the ocean and what its creatures can tell us about human empathy and survival. While rooted in fact, teaching the reader something new about a kind of life in the ocean, Imbler goes beyond simply pondering the wonder of marine biology and threads the life experiences of sea creatures through a deeply human lens; one that is emotional, empathetic, and queer. The fiercely animal spirit of The Soul of an Octopus converges with the deeply personal of The Empathy Exams and the raw intersectional awakening of Long Live the Tribe of the Fatherless Girls in this far-reaching, prismatic collection that promises to shatter our preconceptions about the sea and what it means to survive.
Praise
“Compulsively readable, beautifully lyric, and wildly tender, How Far the Light Reaches asks the reader to sink down, slip beneath, swim forward with outstretched hands, trusting that Sabrina Imbler is there to guide us through the dark. It presents the body as one that might morph and grow in any number of directions. How do we see ourselves? Can we learn to unsee? A breathtaking, mesmerizing debut from a tremendous talent.”
—Kristen Arnett, NYT bestselling author of With Teeth
“This is a miraculous, transcendental book. Across these essays, Imbler has choreographed a dance of metaphor between the wonders of the ocean’s creatures and the poignancy of human experience, each enriching the other in surprising and profound ways. To write with such grace, skill, and wisdom would be impressive enough; to have done so in their first major work is truly breathtaking. Sabrina Imbler is a generational talent, and this book is a gift to us all.”—Ed Yong, New York Times Bestselling author of An Immense World
"In this captivating debut, science writer Imbler shines a light on the mysterious sea creatures that live in Earth’s most inhospitable reaches, drawing parallels to their own experience of adaptation and survival...Imbler’s ability to balance illuminating science journalism with candid personal revelation is impressive, and the mesmerizing glints of lyricism are a treat. This intimate deep dive will leave readers eager to see where Imbler goes next."—Publishers Weekly
“Imbler pulls off an impressive feat: a book about the majestic, bewildering undersea world that also happens to be deeply human.”—Lisa Wong Macabasco, VOGUE, Best Books of Fall
“Imbler thoughtfully examines connections between science and humanity, tying together what should be very loose threads in 10 dazzling essays, each a study of a different sea creature…Throughout, Imbler reveals the surprising ways that sea creatures can teach us about family, sexuality, and survival.”—Annabel Gutterman, TIME, 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the Year
Dyke (Geology) (Black Lawrence Press, 2020)
Through intertwined threads of autofiction, lyric science writing, and the tale of a newly queer Hawaiian volcano, Dyke (Geology) delivers a coming out story on a geological time scale. This is a small book that tackles large, wholly human questions—what it means to live and date under white supremacy, to never know if one is loved or fetishized, how to navigate fierce desires and tectonic heartbreak through the rise and eventual eruption of a first queer love.
“When two galaxies stray too near each other, the attraction between them can be so strong that the galaxies latch on and never let go. Sometimes the pull triggers head-on wrecks between stars—galactic collisions—throwing bodies out of orbit, seamlessly into space. Sometimes the attraction only creates a giant black hole, making something whole into a kind of missing.” In vivid, tensile prose, Dyke (geology) subverts the flat, neutral language of scientific journals to explore what it means to understand the Earth as something queer, volatile, and disruptive.