Sylvia ‘Sally’ Carson, the youngest of three sisters, was born in 1902 in Surrey and brought up by her widowed mother in Dorset. She attended Bournemouth High School then studied dance and gymnastics …
Yann Martel is a Canadian author who wrote the Man Booker Prize–winning novel Life of Pi, an international bestseller published in more than 50 territories. It has sold more than 12 million copies wor…
Helene Hanff (April 15, 1916–April 9, 1997) was an American writer. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she is best known as the author of the book 84 Charing Cross Road, which became the basis for a …
Margaret Kennedy was an English novelist and playwright. She attended Cheltenham Ladies' College, where she began writing, and then went up to Somerville College, Oxford in 1915 to read history. Her fi…
Maggie O'Farrell (born 1972, Coleraine Northern Ireland) is a British author of contemporary fiction, who features in Waterstones' 25 Authors for the Future. It is possible to identify several common …
Hilda Bernstein (May 15, 1915 – September 8, 2006) was an author, artist, and an activist against apartheid and for women's rights. She was born Hilda Schwarz in London and emigrated to South Africa a…
Mary Patricia "Mollie" Panter-Downes was a novelist and newspaper columnist for The New Yorker. Aged sixteen, she wrote The Shoreless Sea which became a bestseller; eight editions were published in 19…
Deborah Levy trained at Dartington College of Arts leaving in 1981 to write a number of plays, highly acclaimed for their "intellectual rigour, poetic fantasy and visual imagination", including PAX, H…
British fiction writer and novelist known for her "sentimental tales of genteel life in the country." She was born in England to American parents and moved back and forth between both countries during…
Joan Barfoot is an award-winning novelist whose work has been compared internationally with that of Anne Tyler, Carol Shields, Margaret Drabble and Margaret Atwood. Her novels include Luck in 2005, no…
Marie NDiaye was born in Pithiviers, France, in 1967; spent her childhood with her French mother (her father was Senegalese); and studied linguistics at the Sorbonne. She started writing when she was …
Born in 1893, DOROTHY WHIPPLE (nee Stirrup) had an intensely happy childhood in Blackburn as part of the large family of a local architect. Her close friend George Owen having been killed in the first…
Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (1889-1955) was born and brought up in New York and educated at Miss Whitcombe's and other schools for young ladies. In 1913 she married George Holding, a British diplomat. Th…
Sarah Moss is the award-winning author of six novels: Cold Earth, Night Waking, selected for the Fiction Uncovered Award in 2011, Bodies of Light, Signs for Lost Children and The Tidal Zone, all short…
Lucy Mangan (born 1974) is a British journalist and author. She is a columnist, features writer and TV critic for The Guardian. Her writing style is both feminist and humorous.
Rebecca Perry was born in 1986 in London. Her first book-length collection, ‘Beauty/Beauty’ (Bloodaxe Books, 2015), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, won the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize 2017, an…
Laura Shepherd-Robinson was born in Bristol in 1976. She has a BSc in Politics from the University of Bristol and an MSc in Political Theory from the London School of Economics. Laura worked in politi…
Douglas Stuart is a NY Times bestselling author. His latest novel, John of John, published in May 2026. His work has been translated into over 40 languages. His debut novel, Shuggie Bain, is the winne…
Stephanie Sy-Quia was born in 1995 and is based in London. Her writing and criticism have been published in The Guardian, The White Review, The Boston Review, Granta, The TLS, and others. She is a Led…
Dr Jess Venner is an award-winning ancient historian and archaeologist. She is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Oxford (2025-28) and was a previous holder of the presiti…
Lori Inglis Hall was born and raised in Leicestershire, and now lives in the South East. Things she loves (in no particular order): books, words, cats, donkeys, her pals, sea swimming, Fake or Fortune…
