Shelley Harris
Shelley Harris’s debut novel, Jubilee (W&N 2012) was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize, chosen as a Radio 4 Book at Bedtime and selected for the Richard and Judy book club. Her second, Vigilante, published by W&N in 2015, was described by The Times as ‘entertainment wrapped round a tense thriller’ and by author Angela Clarke as ‘one of the great feminist novels of our age’.
Shelley was born in South Africa and emigrated to Britain at the age of six. She studied English Literature at the University of Southampton and has an MA from the University of Reading in sixteenth and seventeenth-century literature and history. She has been a teacher, a local journalist, a shop assistant, and a bouncer at teenage discos. She wrote her first novel in a bedsit in Paris, then stuck it in a drawer when courage failed her. Later books have been undertaken with more bravery, under less romantic conditions.
Shelley lectures at the University of Reading, where she is Director of Creative Writing. She has taught and mentored for organisations such as Faber Academy, Arvon and the National Centre for Writing. She lives in Oxfordshire with her family (who are alright, if you like that sort of thing) and a fabulous dog.
