I'm Sarah Newbold (she/her). I'm a therapist, writer, and someone who has spent a long time thinking seriously about kink, desire, and the spaces where intensity and intimacy meet.

I came to knife play the same way most people do: through curiosity, through community, and through the realisation that there was almost nothing useful written about it.

No resources that treated practitioners as intelligent adults. Nothing that held safety and eroticism in the same hand without dropping one of them.

So I wrote the book I wished existed.

The Art of Knife Play is a grounded, kink-literate guide to one of BDSM's most misunderstood practices. It covers consent, safety, psychology, scene preparation, and aftercare, written by someone who understands both the clinical and the lived dimensions of edge play.

I'm also a practising therapist. I run Progressive Therapeutic Collective, a trauma-informed, kink-affirming telehealth practice. My clinical work sits at the intersection of sexuality, identity, trauma, and desire, and I work regularly with people navigating BDSM relationships, power exchange, non-monogamy, and everything in between.

This site exists because good information matters. Because stigma thrives in silence. Because people deserve somewhere to ask real questions without shame, moralising, or the assumption that their desires need to be explained away.

I don't do shock value. I do safety, clarity, and care.

What I believe

Consent is a process, not a checkbox. It requires trust, clarity, and ongoing attention.

Kink is not pathology. Desire is diverse, and that is not a problem to be solved.

Shame does its worst work in the dark. Naming things clearly, and holding them without judgment, is one of the most useful things a person can do.

Everyone deserves access to real information about the things they want to explore.