Miranda France

Miranda France’s writing encompasses fiction, non-fiction, memoir and reportage; she also works as an editor and a translator from Spanish. Her first book was commissioned after she won the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize for travel writing in The Spectator, having spent three years working as a journalist in South America. Bad Times in Buenos Aires (1998) describes the experience of living in Argentina, a country deeply marked by state-sponsored terrorism in the 1970s. Don Quixote’s Delusions: Travels in Castilian Spain (2001) concerns modern Spain and the legacy of its greatest genius, Miguel de Cervantes.

Miranda has also written two novels: That Summer at Hill Farm (2011) and The Day Before the Fire (2015). Her memoir, The Writing School (2023), which explores events following a family tragedy in the context of a writing course, can also serve as a guide to researching and shaping creative non-fiction.

Miranda’s writing has been praised for its warmth and humour as well as its originality and eloquence. She has written for publications including The Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the Spectator, Prospect and the Times Literary Supplement, where she is a consultant editor. She regularly teaches for the Arvon Foundation and is a guest tutor on the Creative Writing MA at Goldsmiths University. Translating is an important second love, and her publications include short stories by Liliana Heker for Yale University Press and Claudia Piñeiro’s Thursday Night Widows, which was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Miranda France lives in South London, where she is a regular volunteer at the local community garden and a dab hand at making chutney al fresco.