Louise Doughty is a bestselling author and graduate of the MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, where her tutors were Malcolm Bradbury and Angela Carter. She is the author of ten novels, most recently A Bird in Winter (2023). The novel previous to that was Platform Seven which has been adapted and filmed for ITVX and will be broadcast later this year (2023). She also created the hit BBC series Crossfire, staring Keeley Hawes. Further previous novels include the number one bestseller, Apple Tree Yard, which sold over half a million copies in the UK alone and has been translated in thirty territories worldwide. A four-part TV adaptation with Emily Watson in the lead role was broadcast on Sunday nights on BBC1 in January 2017. It received widespread critical acclaim and consolidated viewing figures of 7 million per episode, making it the most-viewed new BBC drama since The Night Manager. ‘As with the bestselling novel by Louise Doughty on which it’s based, once you start this, you can’t stop’ – The Times. Louise’s sixth novel, Whatever You Love, was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. She has also won awards for radio drama and short stories, along with publishing one work of non-fiction, A Novel in a Year, based on her popular newspaper column. Louise is a critic and cultural commentator for UK and international newspapers, broadcasts regularly for the BBC and has been the judge for many prizes and awards including the Man Booker Prize and the Costa Novel Award. She lives in London.

Having benefited so much from being able to take the MA course in Creative Writing that Malcolm Bradbury founded, Louise was proud to become a Trustee of this important charity. She is passionate about the causes of literacy, access to literature and creative writing. Louise is also a Trustee of the National Literacy Trust and sits on the Council of the Royal Society of Literature. She is a member of the Folio Academy and in 2019 was awarded an Honorary Doctorate (D.Litt) by the University of East Anglia. In 2017 she was the founder of a Scholarship for BAME candidates for the MA in Creative Writing in conjunction with the UEA Development Office, in order to encourage writers from under-represented communities to take part in the MA programme that had been so vital to her own writing career.

Photograph: Max Kennedy