I was born in Belfast in 1963 and now live in Brighton. I recently completed a creative writing course at Sussex University, during which I wrote a selection of linked short stories called The Hidden Village and was subsequently inspired to write my first novel, The Tree of Eliza. I’m an avid reader and particularly interested in the modern classic writers such as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and DH Lawrence and contemporary literary novels in the vein of Marcus Zusak’s “The Book Thief” and Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner”. I enjoy sailing and abstract photography, which often inspires me to write.