EMMA HENDERSON studied at Somerville College, Oxford and Yale University. She wrote blurbs for Penguin Books for two years, then spent a decade teaching English in comprehensive schools and further education colleges, before moving to the French Alps where, for six years, she ran a ski and snowboard lodge.
She has taught creative writing at Birmingham and Sheffield universities; she now lives in Staffordshire and is a lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Keele University, where she teaches prose, poetry and life writing at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.
Emma’s debut novel, Grace Williams Says It Loud, was published in 2010. It won the McKitterick Prize and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ First Book Award, the Authors’ Club First Novel Award and the Wellcome Book Prize, and was runner-up for the Mind Book of the Year. Her second novel, published in April 2017, The Valentine House, has its roots in a remote valley in the French Alps, where she lived for six years. The Times described it as “beautifully written” and the Daily Mail as “gripping and poignant”.
Emma genuinely enjoys teaching creative writing and, as a teacher/mentor/supervisor/editor, confident in her ability to advise and enable. She brings empathy to her teaching and a deep understanding of the insecurities, life journeys and difficulties experienced by beginner writers, while also having the reputation of being a sharply critical reader, particularly in terms of the fine detail of writing.
- Areas of expertise: literary fiction, short stories, life writing
- Location: Newcastle-under-Lyme; Stoke-on-Trent
- Possible meeting place: Keele University Blackwells coffee shop
Emma is on Twitter and Facebook
