The Almond in the Apricot

Today I talked to Sara Goudarzi about her novel The Almond in the Apricot (Deep Vellum Publishing, 2022).

Emma lives in New Jersey, works as a civil engineer, has a reliable boyfriend, and had a wonderful best friend from college who she always secretly loved even. Not long after her best friend is killed crossing the street in Manhattan, Emma begins having nightmares. In these not-at-all-normal dreams, she is a young girl name Lilly whose life is continuously upended by bombs that force her and her family into a bunker. Unlike normal dreams, Emma’s are continuous and chronological, and she truly inhabits the little girl’s life, including playing with her friends, skipping home from school, or working on her math homework. Lily also finds a wonderful best friend, and when his life is at risk, Emma wants to go back to her dreams to rescue him, but how?

Sara Goudarzi is a Brooklyn writer and holds an M.A. in journalism from New York University and an M.S. in engineering from Rutgers University. Her non-fiction, poetry and translations have appeared in Scientific American, The New York Times, National Geographic News, The Christian Science Monitor, The Globe and Mail, Scholastic’s Science World magazine, The Adirondack Review and Drunken Boat, among others. Sara is the author of Amazing Animals, Leila's Day at the Pool (2022) and several other titles from Scholastic Inc. and has taught writing at NYU and mediabistro. She is a 2017 Writers in Paradise Les Standiford fellow and a Tin House alumna. When she’s not writing, she loves swimming, going to the beach, gardening, traveling, and of course reading!