Jill Dawson was born in Durham and grew up in Staffordshire, Essex and Yorkshire. She read American Studies at the University of Nottingham, then took a series of short-term jobs in London before studying for an MA in Writing at Sheffield Hallam University. In 1997 she was the British Council Writing Fellow at Amherst College, Massachusetts.
Her writing life began as a poet, her poems being published in a variety of small press magazines, and in one pamphlet collection, White Fish with Painted Nails (1990). She won an Eric Gregory Award for her poetry in 1992.
Books in order of publication:
School Tales: Stories by Young Women (editor), Women’s Press, 1990
The Virago Book of Wicked Verse (editor), Virago Press, 1992
White Fish with Painted Nails, Slow Dancer Press, 1990; Slow Dancer Press, 1994,
How Do I Look? Virago Press, 1990
The Virago Book of Love Letters (editor), Virago Press, 1994
Kisses on Paper, Faber and Faber, 1994
Trick of the Light, Sceptre, 1997
Magpie, Sceptre, 1998
Wild Ways: New Stories about Women on the Road (editor with Margo Daly), Hodder & Stoughton, 1998
Fred and Edie, Sceptre, 2000; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002
Gas and Air: Tales of Pregnancy and Birth (editor with Margo Daly), Bloomsbury Publishing, 2002
Wild Boy, Sceptre, 2003
Watch Me Disappear, Sceptre, 2006
The Great Lover Sceptre, 2009
Lucky Bunny, Sceptre, 2011
The Crime Writer, Sceptre, 2016
The Language of Birds, Sceptre, 2019
The Bewitching, Sceptre, 2022
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