I am originally from Lancaster in the north of England but moved south to take up a job in the late 1990s. I now live on the edge of the Fens, north of Cambridge, with my husband and daughter. In some ways, I see myself as a northern writer, though that I am a writer at all surprises me still. Growing up in difficult family circumstances, I saw writing as something other people did (well, other men, mostly), but I always read. It never occurred to me that I could or ever would write a novel.
My first novel, The Words in my Hand, was written with the support of a grant from Arts Council England and was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel award, the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award and longlisted for the Prix du Roman FNAC. My second novel, The Year Without Summer, was published in Feb 2020 by Two Roads books. It was shortlisted for the Historical Writers’ Association Gold Crown and longlisted for the 2021 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.
I am a MacDowell Fellow and worked on my second novel there between November 2017 and January 2018. My third novel, Privilege, a story of book publishing and censorship set in mid-18thc England and France, will be published by Two Roads books in 2022. My short fiction has appeared in Mslexia, The Scotsman and in a collection from The National Galleries of Scotland.
In September 2021, I will start in post as a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge.
Books in order of publication:
The Words in My Hand – 2016
The Year Without Summer – 2020
Privilege – 2022
Oak Lawn Library Friends 