Sara Cooper

[whimsical music] Hello, and welcome back to The Literary Spiral.

Today, I'm joined by author Sara Cooper to talk about her novel, Ravenous, a book that somehow manages to be hilarious, deeply uncomfortable, completely unhinged, and painfully recognizable all at once.

Ravenous follows Bree, an influencer whose life revolves around unboxings, sponsorships, followers, and the constant need to be seen.

But when she becomes pregnant, that carefully curated existence begins to unravel, and suddenly everything is content, including her changing body, her unborn baby, and increasingly her own self-destruction.

What starts as this absurd, almost feverish satire of influencer culture becomes something much darker: a story about loneliness, validation, consumption, body image, performative motherhood, and what happens when your entire sense of self is dependent on being watched.

I absolutely loved how strange and uncomfortable this book was, so I'm very excited to get inside Sarah's head and talk about where Bree came from, the insanity of #livebirth, baby's voice, influencer culture, motherhood, capitalism, and why sometimes the things we're most ravenous for are the things that will never actually fill us.

Let's welcome Sara Cooper to the show.

Are you in Brooklyn?