Jill Dawson

Jill Dawson’s latest novel THE BEWITCHING will be published by Sceptre in the summer of 2022, and tells the true 16th century story of a nine year old girl who accuses her neighbour of being a witch, with dire consequences for all. In addition to the eleven novels published by Sceptre, Jill is the editor of six anthologies of short stories and poetry.

Her other novels are TRICK OF THE LIGHT, MAGPIE, FRED AND EDIE, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award and the Orange Prize, WILD BOY, WATCH ME DISAPPEAR, which was longlisted for the Orange Prize, THE GREAT LOVER, a Richard & Judy Summer Read and THE TELL TALE HEART, which was nominated for the Folio Prize. THE CRIME WRITER tells the imagined story of Patricia Highsmith’s time living in Suffolk, and won The East Anglian Book of the Year, The East Anglian fiction prize and was runner up in the New Angles award. THE LANGUAGE OF BIRDS tells the story of the nanny murdered in the Lucan household in the seventies and was nominated for a Folio award.

Born in Durham, Jill Dawson grew up in Yorkshire. She has won prizes for poetry, short stories and fiction and held many Fellowships, including the Creative Writing Fellowship at the University of East Anglia, where she taught on the MA in Creative Writing course. In 2006 she received an honorary doctorate in recognition of her work and in 2020 became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

She lives in an eco house designed by her husband the architect Meredith Bowles in the Cambridgeshire Fens. She runs Gold Dust a mentoring scheme for writers www.gold-dust.org.uk.