Susanna Clarke

Susanna Mary Clarke was born on 1 November 1959 in Nottingham, England, the eldest daughter of a Methodist minister. She spent her childhood moving across Northern England and Scotland and studied philosophy, politics, and economics at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She worked in publishing and taught English in Italy and Spain before settling in England in 1992 to begin writing. She lives in Derbyshire with her partner, writer Colin Greenland. Clarke is known for her meticulous, imaginative reinvention of nineteenth-century English prose. Her debut novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004), an alternative history in which magic is rediscovered in Regency England, was a decade in the writing, sold to Bloomsbury after a fierce auction, became a major bestseller, and won the Hugo Award. Her second novel Piranesi (2020), a mysterious and uncanny story set in an infinite labyrinthine House, won the Women's Prize for Fiction 2021 and became one of the most beloved novels of the pandemic era.