Elizabeth Speller

Elizabeth Speller was born in Oxford, spent a period living in Italy, and eventually settled in Cirencester. She was educated in London and at Cambridge University, where she read Classics and took a post-graduate degree in Ancient History. She now works as a writer, teacher, journalist and poet, and has contributed to a variety of publications, including the Observer, the Big Issue and Erotic Review. She divides her time between Gloucestershire and Greece.

Elizabeth is the author of Following Hadrian, published by Headline in the UK and OUP in the US in 2002, and the memoir Sunlight on the Garden, published by Granta in 2008.

Her debut novel was the bestselling The Return of Captain John Emmett, which was both an Orange New Writers pick and a Richard & Judy Summer Book Club selection. This was followed by The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton, which also featured Laurence Bartram.

Her novel At Break of Day was published by Virago in the UK and by Pegasus in the US (under the title The First of July).

She is currently working on her next novel, The Hedge of Thorns, to be published by Pegasus.