About me

I was born in London in 1964. My place of birth is now a hospital broom cupboard and my first home was on a street later obliterated beneath a superstore off the Cromwell Rd. However I passed most of my childhood as the eldest of three girls in a house in south London, very near the Thames.

I studied at the University of York and the University of Sussex, completing my academic studies in York with a PhD on the wonderful American poet, Elizabeth Bishop.

Since then I’ve written a memoir and five novels and done the habitual round of the novelist’s other jobs to help balance out my stubborn desire to write.

My most ‘literary’ jobs have been working as a Royal Literary Fund writing fellow, running a reading-round book group (also for the RLF), and working as a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Northumbria.

I live in York with my partner. I have two daughters, two cats, and two bicycles, in that order of importance. I read a great deal, cycle everywhere, sing in a Finnish ‘a cappella group’, grow vegetables with variable success and acquire more films than I ever get around to watching.

Yorkshire Post interview about Out of Me, Tell it to the Bees and about writing