Sarah Holding is a full-time author of children’s and young adult fiction, who divides her time between living and writing in London and Japan. She is known for her best-selling adventure trilogy, ‘SeaBEAN’, which is now taught in dozens of schools across the UK because of its redemptive environmental message and falls into the literary genre of cli-fi. Her subsequent YA novels also speculate about the past (‘Chameleon’) and the future (‘Blackloop’ ) of climate change, creating thrilling narratives where the young protagonists are dealing with technological circumstances that seem initially beyond their control. During COVID she brought out her first poetry anthology, ‘How to Write a Poem’, to help young children cope with their need to recover a sense of identity and belonging.

Her forthcoming title, ‘Road to True North’, a moving and intimately-written novella about a challenging father-son relationship, comes out in September 2025 with Firehorse. 

As an architect, urbanist and academic, Sarah previously wrote under her maiden name, Sarah Chaplin, and published widely in the fields of architectural design history, cultural and critical theory, producing books and articles specifically on Japan.