Isabel Ashdown

Isabel Ashdown is the author of ten novels, most recently Weathering (Orion, 2023). In writing – and reading – she has a particular interest in the dynamics of family and relationships, and this is reflected in the fiction she writes. Her writing career was first launched when she won a national competition in 2008, with judges the late Fay Weldon, Michael Ridpath and the late Sir John Mortimer describing her work as ‘magnificent.’ The following year the novel was published as Glasshopper (Myriad, 2009) and was named as one of the best books of the year in the Observer Review and London Evening Standard.

In her mid-thirties, and with a young family, Isabel gave up her career in product marketing to enter higher education for the first time, gaining a First Class BA in English and a Masters in Creative Writing with distinction from the University of Chichester, where she would years later be engaged as a Royal Literary Fund Fellow. In 2014 Isabel was writer in residence at the University of Brighton, where she has taught on their MA in Creative Writing. Her essay on the subject of voice features in Writing a First Novel by Karen Stevens (Palgrave MacMillan, 2014), and when time allows, she appears at universities and festivals to run workshops, mentor students and talk about the craft and process of creative writing.

Isabel lives on the south coast of England, with her carpenter husband and two dogs. She is a member of the Society of Authors.