Books

Sally Bayley is a writer of fiction and non-fiction interested in the shifting relationship between genres. Her last book, Worm in the Bud, considers ambiguity and history as a character against the backdrop of Victorian society. It is a study in moral vagueness and probes the question, can you be a moral person if you are not well informed? Her forthcoming book, Pond Life, out on October 15th 2026, asks who will record the lives that don’t appear on screen, through the characters of Edith Cull and Dorothy Fortescue, who in different ways are both living spectral lives. Both books can be ordered from The New Menard Press. You can also read more about the development of Edith Cull and Sally’s creative process on the Pond Life page of this website.

Sally’s earlier trilogy, which begins in Girl with Dove (William Collins, 2018), is a literary coming of age story. It has been lauded as a completely original work that invents a new genre. The second part of this sequence, No Boys Play Here (William Collins, January 2022), combines forms of drawing and song with scenes from Shakespeare’s plays. Both are literary experiments that remain true to unconscious instincts and impulses: the life of the body as it meets with the imagination. The final part of the trilogy, The Green Lady (William Collins, July 2023) sees the child-narrator complete her journey from reader to writer with the help of folklore and the laws of nature, guided by the histories of ancestors and ancestral spirits introduced to her through her grandmother’s knowledge of the natural world. The wind, the rain, plants, trees and flowers sow deep seeds in the child’s literary imagination, offering her ways of seeing the world through botany, meteorology and poetry.

One reader has described the experience of reading Girl with Dove and No Boys Play Here as though:

‘I’m in the water and I feel supported but I can’t quite touch the ground and I’m really excited by that —- and this from someone who really likes concrete things. I have complete faith in your writing, so it doesn’t matter that I don’t understand everything. I’m in the water and I’m suspended and I really love that feeling.’

Another reader describes the experience of reading The Green Lady thus:

‘I rarely found a book that I wanted to read again so quickly.Like when devouring the best quality chocolate and coffee you feel your life has been enhanced in the moment of reading but are also encouraged to want more of the best and not be satisfied with mediocrity. Every page contains a visual richness, poetry and musicality, which never feels contrived and has genuine down to earth humour. This book gave me a kinder and more compassionate view of my own past.’

Purchase: Available from all major booksellers. All of Sally’s books can also be purchased from independent bookseller Dennis Harrison at The Sandspout Bookstore. To place an order, email Dennis at sandspoutbookstore@gmail.com and he will post the books directly to you.

Edited Collections

Sally has recently contributed to this collection of short stories on walking. Contributors include: Will Self, Richard Ford, A.L. Kennedy, Patrick Gale, Tim Parks, Nicholas Shakespeare, Pico Iyer, Josephine Rowe, Joanna Kavenna, Agnes Poirer, and Kamila Shamsie.

“Sally Bayley’s fable WORM IN THE BUD plunges the reader suddenly & without warning into almost physical, tropical proximity to her characters. The ending is vertiginous and places, like the pigs head on a stick in LORD OF THE FLIES, all the unspoken, stifling venality that has come before making it as necessary and inescapable as fate. Astonishing.” (Stephen Romer, poet, critic)Order here: https://www.thenewmenardpress.com/copy-of-jugoslovenska-kinoteka