The Weight of a Text In September 2008 I left my job as a structural engineer to enrol in a fine art degree course. I had been working for a...

Of all the hours of advice on creating fiction I’ve sat through , the one sentence that really made me sit up was  ‘Write about what you know’.  But my...

A few years ago, I started working on a novel. A type of novel that didn’t yet seem to exist. Not zombies in space; not aliens on Tinder; not a...

Since the #MeToo movement uncoiled and private matters have become public – Belfast, Blasey – women have been on trial for their memories. Female experience has always been branded ‘alleged’,...

An editor once warned me off labelling my writing as historical fiction. ‘It’s a narrow genre,’ he said, ‘and it gives off a certain impression.’ He was talking about a...

I showed up in China like most white people—clueless, not speaking the language, utterly out of my element, and trying to convince myself that the hotel employees actually liked me....

I was in my late twenties and living in Oxford, working as an assistant editor in the trade department at Oxford University Press, when I started He Is Mine and...

I am always on the search for a good love story. Not particularly loyal to one genre, I read thrillers, science fiction, fantasy, and historical fiction, anything as long as...

I was born into a family with a strong military tradition on both sides. As a child I assumed that everyone had parents who had ‘been in the war.’ Growing...

When I’m asked about my fiction, I tend to start rabbiting on about the things I am trying to explore, the political implications and so on. But if I stop...