“Everyone said, 'Well, you're very old for a first novel,' and I said, 'How do you write when you haven't lived? How do you write when you have no experience? How do you write straight out of university?'”

English novelist, playwright and short story writer

Kate Atkinson is an English novelist, playwright and short story writer. She is known for fiction that ranges across historical, detective and family novels, and for blending postmodern and magical realist elements into her work. Her debut novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, won the Whitbread Book Award in 1995. She later won the Costa Book Award for Novel for Life After Life in 2013 and A God in Ruins in 2015. Atkinson is also known for the Jackson Brodie detective novels, which were adapted for BBC One as Case Histories.