Sally O’Reilly

Sally O’Reilly is a novelist specialising in historical fiction with a particular interest in marginalised voices. Her first two novels were published by Michael Joseph/Penguin and her historical novel Dark Aemilia (2014) was published by Myriad Editions/Picador US. This tells the story of Elizabethan poet Aemilia Lanyer and her fractious relationship with William Shakespeare. The US edition was nominated for the Kirkus prize. 

An Honorary Associate of the Open University, Sally has a strong interest in writing about the climate crisis and is collaborating on a number of projects focused on climate change and storytelling. These look at ways of using writing workshops to develop climate awareness and new approaches to activism. Her eco-fable inspired by Shakespeare’s Macbeth has received Society of Authors funding. 

Sally is a Cosmopolitan new journalist of the year and has worked for Christian Aid, Barnardo’s and the National of Teachers, and as a freelance for the Guardian, New Scientist and Sunday Times. In 2009, she took a Distinction for an MA in Creative Writing at Brunel University and studied for a Creative Writing PhD, for which she was awarded an Isambard Kingdom Brunel Research Scholarship. She has since worked as a senior lecturer at the University of Portsmouth and the Open University, where she was a leading member of the team which produced a multi-genre, online MA in Creative Writing, and is co-editor of Creative Writing: A Workbook with Readings (Routledge). She has supervised three PhDs to completion and runs writing workshops and offers mentoring services to writers.