Kate Atkinson

Kate Atkinson is a British novelist. Born in York in 1951, she studied English at the University of Dundee and received her doctorate from the same institution. Her debut novel Behind the Scenes at the Museum (1995) won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and announced her as a major new voice in British fiction. She is also known for her series of crime novels featuring detective Jackson Brodie. Atkinson's novel Life After Life (2013) is widely considered her masterpiece—a formally dazzling novel about a woman named Ursula Todd who is born in 1910 and then dies repeatedly, living her life over and over again with variations, as the story moves through the twentieth century and two World Wars. The novel won the Costa Novel Award, the South Bank Sky Arts Award, the Women's Prize for Fiction Prize, and the Indies Choice Book Award for Adult Fiction in 2014. Its sequel A God in Ruins (2015) won the Costa Novel Award. Atkinson's most recent novels include Transcription (2018) and Shrines of Gaiety (2022). She is widely regarded as one of the most significant British novelists of her generation. She lives in Edinburgh.