Alison MacLeod

Alison MacLeod is a leading novelist and short story writer, with a particular interest in the porous boundaries between realist accounts (i.e. historical records, memoirs, news reports) and the forces of the human imagination. Her novel Tenderness (Bloomsbury, 2021) explores D. H. Lawrence’s creation of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and the era-defining events which surrounded its publication. MacLeod’s novel Unexploded (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin, 2013) was longlisted for the Booker Prize, named one of The Observer’s Books of the Year and serialised for BBC Radio 4. All the Beloved Ghosts (Bloomsbury, 2017) was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story prize and Canada’s Governor General’s award for fiction. In recent years, MacLeod has directed The Stories We Tell, an initiative funded by Arts Council England and the National Lottery to provide writing workshops and guidance to diverse and underrepresented writers. The Stories We Tell anthology, with essay contributions from some of today’s best writers, is forthcoming from Myriad Editions.

MacLeod is an occasional contributor to BBC Radio 4, the Sunday Times and the Guardian, and has appeared at numerous literary festivals in the UK and internationally. For over twenty-five years, alongside her writing, MacLeod lectured in literature and creative writing before turning to write full-time in 2018. In her RLF role, she draws on this rich range of teaching experience. She lives in Brighton and is visiting professor at the University of Chichester. The landscapes of Sussex, where she has lived since 1989, are an ongoing source of inspiration for her.