About

Born into a family of eccentrics and raised in a haunted house, I developed an early interest in making things up. After completing my BA at Oxford, I lived in Boston, Massachusetts. There, my jobs ranged from babysitter and box-assembler to researcher and lecturer at Harvard, where I also completed my PhD. Since returning to the UK, I’ve taught Creative Writing at Lancaster and Chester Universities and held a writing fellowship at Chester. I’m now a creative writing lecturer, teaching for Comma Press and The University of Hull.

My first novel, The Monster’s Wife was shortlisted for the Scottish First Book of the Year Award. A subsequent novel, The American Girl, was published by William Morrow (US) and Harper Collins (UK) and translated into Korean by Tomato Publishing – both books have been optioned for film. My flash fiction, poems, and short stories have appeared in a number of anthologies such as Best British Crime Stories, magazines like The Cincinnati Review, The Citron Review, Fictive Dream, BULL, Gooseberry Pie, Flash Fiction Online, Tiny Molecules, Paragraph Planet, Blood+Honey, Ink Sweat, & Tears, Fish Barrel Review, Trash Cat Lit, Storyglossia, Momaya Press, Iota, Erbacce, Ravenglass, Needle, & Cake, and placed in competitions including, most recently, Bath, Bournemouth, Cranked Anvil, Bridport, Smokelong, Frogmore, and Oxford Flash Fiction. I am currently working on a novella-in-flash and my first collection of short stories and I’m on the editorial board of Best Small Fictions and the co-founder/editor of Inkfish Magazine and Press.