A Really Good Novel Helps To Heal People - Amanda Craig

Amanda Craig is a British novelist, short-story writer and critic. Born in South Africa in 1959, she grew up in Italy, where her parents worked for the UN, and was educated at Bedales School and Clare College Cambridge.

After a brief time in advertising and PR, she became a journalist for newspapers such as The Sunday Times, the Observer, The Daily Telegraph and the Independent, winning both the Young Journalist of the Year and the Catherine Pakenham Award. She still reviews children’s books for The New Statesman, and literary fiction for The Observer, but is now a full-time novelist. 

Her seventh novel, Hearts And Minds, was long-listed for the Bailey’s Prize for Women’s Fiction, and her eighth, The Lie of the Land, was a Radio 4 Book At Bedtime, a YOU Magazine Book Club choice and picked by six national newspapers as a Book of the Year in 2018. Her latest novel, The Three Graces, was published on 8th June 2023 by Abacus. Described as My Brilliant Friend meets A Room With a View, The Three Graces has just been optioned for TV serialisation by Alison Owen at Momentum Pictures after a three-way auction.

My conversation with Amanda ranged far and wide, and among many topics, we talked about growing up in Italy, the state of the publishing industry, her advice for aspiring writers, the immense struggles she had in the early years of her career while raising children, and of course her writing (including a sneak preview about what she's working on at the moment). 

Amanda is such an articulate and thoughtful guest and I loved listening to her talk - I hope you do too!

If you want to know more about Amanda - https://www.amandacraig.com and @amandapcraig on X