Caitlin Davies

Caitlin Davies was born in London in 1964. A prolific writer, she is the author of five novels, five non-fiction books, and several short stories. She has been a journalist for 20 years, and is also a trained English teacher.

After studying American studies at the University of Sussex and English at Clark University in Massachusetts, she moved to Botswana in 1989. There she became a journalist and worked for the country’s first tabloid newspaper, the Voice. Later, as editor of the Okavango Observer, she was arrested for ‘causing fear and alarm’ but she also received a journalist of the year award. Many of her books are set in the Okavango Delta, where she lived for 12 eventful years, including an acclaimed memoir Place of Reeds (2005). After returning to London she wrote education and careers features for the Independent, and has written for most national newspapers.

Her main interest is historical fiction and the buried lives of women from the past. The Ghost of Lily Painter (2011) is based on the true story of two Edwardian baby farmers, while Family Likeness (2013) concerns the fate of children born to GI fathers. She also writes social histories, such as Downstream: a social history of swimming the River Thames (2015), which unfortunately required her to put on a wetsuit. She frequently runs writing workshops and gives talks at schools, libraries and literary festivals. For her next project she is writing the fictional life story of a ‘champion lady swimmer of the world’.