Sarah Perry was born in Essex in 1979. She has a PhD in creative writing from Royal Holloway, and has been the Writer in Residence at the Gladstone Library and the UNESCO World City of Literature Writer in Residence in Prague. Her first novel, 'After Me Comes the Flood', was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Folio Prize, and won the East Anglian Book of the Year Award in 2014. Het second book, 'The Essex Serpent' was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2017, chosen as Waterstones Book of the Year 2016, awarded Book of the Year and Fiction Book of the Year at the British Book Awards 2017 and longlisted for the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.