Sarah Braunstein is the author of The Sweet Relief of Missing Children (W. W. Norton), shortlisted for the 2011 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize. In 2010, the National Book Foundation named her one of “5 Under 35” fiction writers. Based in Portland, Maine, she is now at work on a second novel and a nonfiction book about suburban adolescence, of which “The Blowjob Whale” is part.