Story

I was born in 1987 in West Sussex, the eldest child of two musicians. After six years living around Petworth and a short stint in London, I grew up shuttling between Salisbury, where I lived with my mother and step-father, another musician, and Salisbury Plain, where my father lived under a firing range.

My career in the theatre started with an ushering job in Salisbury and a producing job in Oxford; I was then fortunate to assist Michael Frayn, Peter Gill, Thelma Holt and Max Stafford-Clark in various capacities, before becoming a full-time writer following the success of my first play, Visitors. Having trained under the poets Bernard O’Donoghue, Andrew Motion and Jo Shapcott, I also began a career as a novelist with the publication of my best-selling debut, Five Rivers Met On A Wooded Plain, and ran a touring theatre company, Up In Arms, in collaboration with the director Alice Hamilton.

In 2016, shortly after the beginning of my writing life, the illness of a loved one turned me into a carer, and for several years the impact of this became the principle subject of my work. Following the pandemic, I moved back to Salisbury, my home town, and resumed writing about the rest of my life.