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...

My debut novel, Innocents was released on September 27, 2017. I started writing the first draft on February 14, 2014.   I got caught in a lie, is what happened....

It might sound odd to say it, but there is no such thing as historical fiction. And yet if you write a literary novel set in the past, let’s say...

Any writer will recognize this start: as a child, reading and writing were simply the things I always did.  At seven, I filled an exercise book with short stories and...