Kathryn Heyman is a novelist, essayist and scriptwriter. Her sixth novel, Storm and Grace, was published to great critical acclaim in 2017. Her first novel, The Breaking, was shortlisted for the Stakis Award for the Scottish Writer of the Year and longlisted for the Orange Prize. Other awards include an Arts Council of England Writers Award, and nominations for the Edinburgh Fringe Critics’ Award, the Kibble Prize, and the West Australian Premier’s Book Awards. Her work has been compared to that of Cormac McCarthy, Kate Grenville, Angela Carter, Peter Carey, William Golding and Joseph Conrad.
Raised in Australia, Heyman spent many years living in the UK, where she began her publishing career after studying at Sheffield Hallam University, under the tutelage of the Caribbean poet E.A Markham. Heyman has held several writing fellowships, including the Scottish Arts Council Writing Fellowship at the University of Glasgow, and a Royal Literary Fun Writing Fellowship at Westminster College, Oxford. She taught creative writing for the University of Oxford and is now Conjoint Professor in Humanities at the University of Newcastle. In 2012 she funded the Australian Writers Mentoring Programme.