Author Biographies

Katharine Davies grew up in Warwickshire and read English and Drama at London University. She taught English Language and Literature in secondary schools in the UK and also Sri Lanka, before doing an MA in Creative Writing and moving to Wales to write. She currently lives in North London. A Good Voyage is her first novel.

Erica James is a best-selling novelist whose books routinely garner critical acclaim. She grew up in Hampshire and has since lived in Oxford, Yorkshire and Belgium, finally settling in Cheshire with her two sons, Edward and Samuel. Erica is the author of nine wonderful novels, three of which have been nominated for the Romantic Novel of the Year Award: Airs & Graces, Act of Faith and Precious Time.

Andrea Levy was born in London in 1956 to Jamaican parents. Her first three novels, Every Light in the House Burnin’, Never Far from Nowhere, Fruit of the Lemon explored, - from different perspectives - the problems faced by black British-born children of Jamaican emigrants. She is a recipient of an Arts Council Writer’s Award and winner of the 2004 Orange Prize for Fiction and the Whitbread Book of the Year Award. Andrea lives and works in London.

Susan Lewis was born in 1956, in Bristol. Susan has worked at both HTV and Thames television. Her writing career began when she left TV twelve years ago and bought a house in the South of France. Since then, she has experienced the glamour of Hollywood, complete with celebrity neighbours - Nicholas Cage and George Clooney to name a few! Susan returned to the UK in 2003 but has recently decided that her creative inspiration does in fact lie in France!

Elizabeth Noble, 36, read English at Oxford University and followed a well trodden path into publishing as a (very bored) secretary. She ‘retired’ seven years later, after working her way through most departments and leaving a terrible mess in the filing. She wrote her first novel when the youngest of her two daughters went to nursery school. She thought having a go at that sounded better than a proper job. Now writing her third novel, she’s discovered that you can do all sorts of things in the name of research, and she’s having a very happy time. Sometimes she even wears dry-clean only clothing and talks about something other than her children. She lives in Surrey.

Cecilia Samartin was born in Havana in 1961 in the midst of the revolution. She arrived with her parents as a refugee to the United States while still a baby and grew up in Los Angeles as a fully bicultural, bilingual American. She studied psychology at UCLA and Marriage and Family Therapy at Santa Clara University. Deeply concerned with the lack of Spanish-speakers within her profession, Cecilia has practised within the Latino communities in some of the most impoverished inner city areas of San Jose and Los Angeles. She lives with her British-born husband in San Gabriel. Ghost Heart is her first novel.