My Life in Sea Creatures

This is a miraculous, transcendental book... 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, author of I Contain Multitudes

[This book] marks the arrival of a phenomenal writer creating an intellectual channel entirely their own, within which whales and feral goldfish swim by the enchantment, ache, and ecstasy of human life

MEGHA MAJUMDAR, author of A Burning

Sabrina Imbler writes with incredible curiosity, compassion, and wit. This is a book that asks us to care not simply for one another, but for creatures far distant from us-for the sea, the land, and the worlds we make together

JESSICA J. LEE, author of Two Trees Make A Forest

How do we place our selves in the natural world? What are the costs and gains of our attachment to it? Where would you put Sabrina Imbler's astounding book on the shelf? In a separate section, marked: Awe and Wonder

PHILIP HOARE, author of Albert & the Whale

A delicious balance of the zoological and the personal. Imbler manages to gaze both inward to the self and outward to the strange selves of the creatures in the world's waters

ROWAN HISAYO BUCHANAN, author of Harmless Like You

It's a marvel...To find the conundrums of human sexuality and identity reflected back at you by a jellyfish is nothing short of a revelation. Reading this book was an entrancing, provocative, unforgettable experience

ISABELLA TREE, author of Wilding

A pinwheel of awe spinning one 'wow' after another

SOUVANKHAM THAMMAVONGSA, author of How to Pronounce Knife

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

Compulsively readable, beautifully lyric, and wildly tender... A breathtaking, mesmerizing debut from a tremendous talent

KRISTEN ARNETT, author of Mostly Dead Things

Working at the nexus of nature writing and memoir, Sabrina Imbler is beautifully reinventing both genres

ANGELA CHEN, author of ACE

[It] is a creature unlike any other-one that grips you with its tentacles and pulls you down into new depths. It is impossible to read this book and not be transformed

RACHEL E. GROSS, author of Vagina Obscura

Compelling, distinctive and enthralling, Sabrina Imbler has found a whole new way to help us think about and care about the deep and interweaving curiosities of human life and sea life

HELEN SCALES, author of The Brilliant Abyss

My Life in Sea Creatures is an ingenious book that shows, with a glittering skill, how the precious life around us enriches our world and our ways of living. This is nature writing with an open and daring heart

SEÁN HEWITT, author of All Down Darkness Wide

Profound, surprising, and thrillingly strange. I love it

SY MONTGOMERY, author of The Soul of an Octopus

[This} is a bright, shimmering gift of a book that deftly glides and weaves, exploring sea life and the self with boundless curiosity, tenderness, and wisdom... Every essay in this brilliant debut collection deserves to be treasured

NICOLE CHUNG, author of All You Can Ever Know

[This book] is an incandescent and provocative exploration of worlds we often do not see, rendered with the utmost tenderness and care... providing a new framework that will forever change how we understand the world around us

KAT CHOW, author of Seeing Ghosts

Imbler pulls off an impressive feat: a book about the majestic, bewildering undersea world that also happens to be deeply human

Vogue

Imbler blends personal history with the most fascinating writing on sea creatures living in remote and deep areas of the ocean. Metaphors abound around family, community, queerness, and survival; this book is another jewel in the crown of Imbler's incredible work

Them

A superb must-read... [a] collection of fascinating essays [which] explores the wonders of rivers and oceans in the light of the writer's own life

Tablet

Imbler is a terrific talent... with brutal candor and elegant metaphor, [My Life in Sea Creatures] reveals the gap between where we are today and a truly inclusive and connected world

Science Magazine

By way of an exploration of the diverse wonders of marine biology, Imbler reconstructs with raw openness the intensity of their experiences of being a teenager, of coming out, and of gender and racial prejudice

Literary Review

Imbler is [...] a gifted science and nature writer, capable of describing sea creatures with knowledge, originality and supple poeticism

Bidisha Mamata, Observer

Imbler, a science journalist, shines a light on some of the ocean's most delightful and overlooked creatures... the author draws connections between these fascinating animals and our own needs and desires - for safety, family and more

New York Times

Sabrina Imbler's latest book mingles memoir and marine biology in a tender, lucid look at the author's life refracted through the deep sea. Their essays' mesmerizing descriptions of the often mysterious lives of aquatic animals also serve as portals of inquiry into Imbler's life on land

Scientific Magazine

A lyrical consideration of alternative models of survival

Vanity Fair

An astonishing debut . . . The effect is transcendent . . . an exquisite and indefinable hybrid that is far greater than the sum of its parts . . . At a time when humanity is destroying natural abundance and failing to understand its own diversity, a book like Imbler's is a valuable gift

Lucy Cooke, Guardian

A singular memoir revealing what we can learn about empathy from odd beasties living in hostile environments

i

I loved this. A double helix of queer memoir and marine biology that twists together beautifully

MARK HADDON

[My Life in Sea Creatures] feels like a quiet tidal change in books for our community and beyond... Sabrina's bioluminescent prose stuns

DIVA

This book made my heart grow like a feral goldfish. Reading it was a journey into my rapidly expanding self. It made me feel limitless and accompanied. I'm deeply grateful to Sabrina Imbler for writing it

DOREEN CUNNINGHAM, author of Soundings

Sabrina Imbler's latest book mingles memoir and marine biology in a tender, lucid look at the author's life refracted through the deep sea. Their essays' mesmerizing descriptions of the often mysterious lives of aquatic animals also serve as portals of inquiry into Imbler's life on land

Scientific American

A lyrical consideration of alternative models of survival

Vanity Fair

Imbler, a science journalist, shines a light on some of the ocean's most delightful and overlooked creatures...Along the way, the author draws connections between these fascinating animals and our own needs and desires - for safety, family and more

New York Times