That Sarah Maslin Nir loves horses is not new news; it says so all the way at the bottom of her New York Times reporter's biography, but the way things are going for her lately, perhaps that line should be a little higher up.
Her first book, "Horse Crazy: The Story of a Woman and a World in Love with an Animal," published in August 2020, was such a success that it has spawned a series of middle-grade children's books, called "Once Upon a Horse." The first in this series, "The Flying Horse," was released in March. A fall release is planned for the second, "The Jockey and Her Horse," telling the story of Cheryl White, the first Black female jockey, co-written with Ms. White's brother, Raymond White Jr. A third book is in the works.
But mentioning her love of horses at the bottom of her Times bio was an intentional choice. "I cover really, really tough stuff: the worst moments in life," Ms. Nir said in an interview. "I was worried that if I revealed that so much of my soul is caught up with fluffy ponies, I wouldn't be taken seriously."
Her bio needs some serious updating, she said, but she may not have to worry anymore about whether she'll be taken seriously.
Ms. Nir, a born-and-raised Manhattanite who has a house in East Hampton and horses in Sagaponack, France, and Whitehouse, N.J., now has two Pulitzer nominations to her credit. The first, in 2016, was a solo nomination for "Unvarnished," a yearlong investigation into the nail-salon industry. This year, she was part of a Times team named finalists for their in-depth coverage of a January 2022 fire in the Bronx that killed 17 people.
She has combined her passion for journalism with her love of horses in two exposes on "major figures in the equestrian world who were categoric rapists." One of them, George Morris, was ultimately barred from the industry.
"That was tough, because it got me a lot of enemies in the sport, in the same way that people protect powerful Hollywood people," Ms. Nir recalled.
Riding horses "is restorative" for the work she does. "Taking on the tough subjects I write about makes me need the horses," she said. "I don't think I could do one without the other. I think it would be harder to do less."
But before Amy Novesky, an agent with Cameron Kids, the publisher of "Once Upon a Horse," contacted her on Instagram to inquire about a middle-grade series, Ms. Nir had not considered writing for children. "Which is silly, because I realized every book I read as a child was a horse book," she said, citing classics like "Misty of Chincoteague" and "Black Beauty." "They were such a part of my identity."
But her "Once Upon a Horse" series is not all fiction; rather, she's taken a journalistic approach.
"My wheelhouse is fact, so I decided to do as 'reported' a fictional book as I could," Ms. Nir said. She went on to explain: "Every place they go is based on real places, every fact about horses is real. In 'The Flying Horse,' the horse Trendsetter doesn't fly with wings -- he flies in an airplane. I actually flew in the belly of a 747 with nine horses to see how that was done."
"The Jockey and Her Horse" tells a particularly meaningful story.
"The story of Black jockeys has been erased from American history," Ms. Nir said. "The way thoroughbred racing was done in its earliest days, you ran the horses you owned with the humans you owned on their backs. There was an idea that you buried them in manure and sweated them out to keep them short. You starved them to keep them light. You went to West Africa to purchase jockeys."
"In our book about Cheryl, she goes on a journey and learns that history herself, so I hope the reader does, too. But the book isn't dark -- it's a book of triumph, because Cheryl's life was a triumph."
"The Jockey and Her Horse" has now been optioned for two movies, and there will even be a Breyer toy set to accompany its publication. "It's really exciting that there is a wider world of interest in Cheryl's story," Ms. Nir said.
In addition to reporting for The Times and riding and showing on the amateur circuit, Ms. Nir has begun "developing" horses, meaning investing in their breeding and training.
She recalled youthful summers spent in East Hampton, where she worked at restaurants and camps to pay for riding lessons. She rode at East End Stables in her youth, and now has five horses of her own (which she bought with her "Horse Crazy" book advance, she told Publishers Weekly in February). Even with two Pulitzer nominations and multiple books, she's still the same person who spent many years as a trail guide at Deep Hollow Ranch, the same person who used to "sneak back onto the ranch and "steal the horses for midnight beach joy rides."
"Although I'm from the city, I think because I worked alongside so many members of the local community, I was really invited into their world," Ms. Nir said. "My childhood was a Bonacker's childhood in a lot of ways -- going to Little Albert's at night and having bonfires at Truck Beach and clamming and jumping off people's boats we snuck into at night in Three Mile Harbor."
"We would ride from East End Stables on Oakview Highway down a back road to a farm stand on Cedar Street, and we would pick up a loaf of bread and iced tea, and we had no conception of how decadent we were in this beautiful beach town, eating French bread on the backs of horses," she continued. "When I was 11, maybe I imagined there was a job writing stories about horses, and I have it. I don't think that girl riding bareback on Cedar Street even dared to dream that this could come true."
