Carol Clewlow

Carol Clewlow started off her writing life as a journalist. She worked in Northern Ireland at the outbreak of the Troubles, and then later in Hong Kong where she became women’s page editor on the English-language newspaper, the China Mail. Her first book was a travel guide to Hong Kong and Macau written for the then fledgling Lonely Planet company and was its first bestseller.

Returning to Britain, she worked for national newspapers and the BBC before a spell as a mature student at university led to her writing a novel. The result, Keeping the Faith (Faber, 1987), was shortlisted for the Whitbread prize, while her second novel, the bestselling A Woman’s Guide to Adultery (Penguin, 1989), was translated into 15 languages and turned into a TV mini-series. Two more novels followed, Love in the Modern Sense (Penguin, 1993) and One for the Money (Penguin, 1994), the latter set in the rock-music industry and presented on stage at the Edinburgh Fringe. Her latest book, also a bestseller, is Not Married Not Bothered (HarperCollins, 2005).

In 2000, as an RLF Fellow, she became the first writer-in-residence at a UK medical school. It was while working at Newcastle University Medical School that she became a founder member of Operating Theatre, designed to produce professional drama on health and clinical issues. She is now its principal playwright.