Author: Louise Beech
I remember sitting in my musician father's cross-legged lap while he tried to show me the guitar chords. My small fingers stumbled and gave up. I was three. His music sheets fascinated me - such strange language that translated into music. My mother taught French and English, so her fluency with words fired my interest. I knew from being small that I wanted to write, to create, to make magic.
I love all forms of writing. My short stories have won the Glass Woman Prize, the Eric Hoffer Award for Prose, and the Aesthetica Creative Works competition, as well as shortlisting twice for the Bridport Prize and being published in a variety of UK magazines. My first play, Afloat, was performed at Hull Truck Theatre in 2012. I also wrote a ten-year newspaper column for the Hull Daily Mail about being a parent, garnering love/hate criticism. My debut novel, How to be Brave, was a Guardian Readers' pick for 2015.
My third novel Maria in the Moon was described as ‘quirky, darkly comic and heartfelt’ by the Sunday Mirror; The Lion Tamer Who Lost shortlisted for the Popular Romantic Novel of 2019 at the RNA Awards and longlisted for the Polari Prize 2019; Call Me Star Girl longlisted for the Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize and was Best magazine’s Best Book of the Year 2019; and I Am Dust was a Crime Magazine Monthly Pick. This Is How We Are Human was a Clare Mackintosh Book of the Month.
Daffodils, my memoir, is out now in audiobook, and Nothing Else my newest novel in eBook.
Louise Swanson/Beech 