ADOPTING A PEN NAME

How Sara Read is becoming Sarah Henrik

I figure I ought to write something about adopting a pen name now that my friends are starting to think that a) someone hacked my social media accounts, or b) I got divorced.

Neither of those things happened. I’ve simply taken my literary identity and changed its name. You can do that. It’s kind of amazing. And weird. And also—amazing. So let me tell you about how Sara Read, the author, is becoming Sarah Henrik.

Why a Pen Name?

It started as a decision based on giving my next book the best chance of success. And yes, changing my name can contribute to that. (Not at all required, though! If you’re changing genres or publishers or dealing with a less than stellar sales record, don’t freak out.) As far as I’ve gathered, it’s all about representing my work in a new light to the big book buyers (Barnes & Noble, et al.) That is, not directly tying me to the sales record of my first two books (which sold okay, but not great). It’s an open secret but it could put a little cushion of potential around what I’m writing now that otherwise might not be there.

My next book, THE SPIRIT OF BROKEN THINGS, is about a wildlife biologist who struggles with undiagnosable chronic illness who is lured into a spirit world, a la Spirited Away only in the Nordic wilderness, and discovers a missing half of herself there in the form of an angry ghost.

My first two books are straight up contemporary realism, so this moves me into a new genre. In some ways a new name could reduce confusion. My existing readers might see Sara Read on a book and be surprised that they were getting something quite different from what they had read before.

I also want to put a little distance between my literary identity and the rest of my life. I’m on social media entirely as a writer, and while I’m authentically myself online, my engagement here is about sharing my creative life, not my personal life. I’ve also recently started a new full-time job which is a bit more public-facing than I’ve been before.

It’s not much, but I like the layer of distance and protection an alternate name gives me.

So I’m adopting Sarah Henrik as my literary identity. The longer I’ve sat with this change, the more I find that renaming myself creates a sort of psychic freedom that I really like. It allows me to separate myself a bit from my own expectations and patterns.

My mother in Rovaniemi, Finland, ca. 1935. She’s the sassy looking one in the middle with her arms crossed.

How I chose a name

As I went through possible options, I made a couple of decisions.

1. I wanted to keep Sara/Sarah as my first name. I’ve had this name long enough—plus I’ve never had a nickname—that I figured it would be too weird and take too much effort to start answering to a totally different first name. What I hear from other authors is that using the name at in-person events takes some getting used to! I stuck the H on the end of Sara to differentiate it, and because I like the way it looks.

2. I wanted the name to connect to something about me that felt meaningful. I totally get that this is not required! Many authors choose a name they like and go with it.

3. It had to be relatively easy to spell and pronounce. Also not a requirement, but I was Sara Nisenson for thirty years of my life, and while I love that name, I got heartily sick of spelling it for people and correcting their pronunciation. (Fun fact: For decades I have been telling people I will give them $10 if they can spell Nisenson correctly after I say it once. No one has ever succeeded.) If I was going to choose a name voluntarily, it was going to be one that didn’t come with those jobs attached. Unfortunately, this eliminated my mother’s birth name, Marttiini, with its two Ts and two Is.

So I started making lists, sending ideas to my writing BFF, trying things out, saying them out loud. For quite a while, nothing felt right. It wasn’t until I was hanging out with my sister and she did a little digging into my mother’s family roots and came up with the name Henrik.

When my grandfather was born in northern Finland (Lapland) around the turn of the 20^th century, many Finns had Swedish names. Finland was part of Sweden from the 13^th century until it was ceded to Russia in 1809, and for a long time a Finnish name could be an impediment to upward mobility. He was named Johann Henrik. But in the early 1900s, around the dawning of Finnish independence in 1917, many Finns reclaimed Finnish names, and my grandfather became Janne Marttiini.

Janne is a bit of a larger-than-life figure in my family. He and my grandmother, Esteri, had twelve children and started a global knife brand from a smithy north of the Arctic Circle. He is also widely remembered as a fair boss and a kind and generous man. Interestingly, he died on the day I was born. What a day that was for my mother, I can hardly imagine.

I love Finland. I have literally dozens of cousins there. My dream is to spend half the year there, if not move there entirely, and I have dual citizenship. The Spirit of Broken Things is set there. So though it’s technically a Swedish name, Henrik connects me to those roots.

My grandfather’s original smithy, still standing in Kierinki, Finland.

How I’m Making the Change

I don’t have any big media empire or anything that requires a lot of finesse around my name, so I just up and did it. I used to be Sara Read, now I’m Sarah Henrik. Ta-da! Sort of a soft launch, if you will.

1. I changed my website to sarahhenrik.com. On that site, I link to my first two books “Writing as Sara Read.” I forwarded my old website to this new address, so if anyone looks for me there, they’ll find my new site. I still have some SEO to do, and I need to update my LinkTree, but the basics are done.

2. I changed over my socials. I’m on Substack, BlueSky, and Instagram. Rarely Threads and never Facebook. I no longer have a Twitter/X account. It’s been as simple as changing my profile name and putting a mention in my name or bio “was Sara Read.” Once people get used to it, I’ll take that off.

3. Switching over my newsletters is the last step. Changing my name and even my substack.com address for my author newsletter was easy. I still need to redo my header graphic.

4. I’m querying for a new literary agent under my pen name. (I had an amicable breakup with my prior agent. More on that in another post.) I have a paragraph in my query letter where I talk about my published books. I state, “Writing as Sara Read (my legal name), my two published novels are…” and I go on to talk about JOHANNA and PRINCIPLES.

I’m sure there will be some bumpy spots. Like, for example, when the lovely indie bookseller, Flannery at Bluebird & Co., who has been my champion asked me, How should we promote you now? Uh, I’m not sure? I figure go with Sara Read until I publish something as Sarah Henrik.

It’s a process. I’ll keep you posted :)

Do you have questions about adopting a pen name? If you’ve done it, what was your process? How has it gone? I’d love to hear your thoughts!