Elizabeth Speller has a Cambridge MA and MPhil and was a visiting scholar at Lucy Cavendish College. Her three novels include The Return of Captain John Emmett (Orange Book of the Month, Richard & Judy pick) and At Break of Day/ The First of July US (CNY State One Read 2015 in the US). Her work is published in eight languages. She has also contributed to an anthology ‘Kiss and Part’. Her non-fiction includes Following Hadrian (Hodder/OUP US), as well as colourful Companion Guides to both Athens and Rome (Granta). Of her acclaimed memoir, The Sunlight on the Garden (Granta) a TLS reviewer wrote: “There are echoes … of Sylvia Plath’s ability to combine beauty with irony, and suffering with comedy.”
She has won or been short-listed for several poetry prizes including second place in the Bridport Prize and short-listing for the Forward Prize for Poetry and she provided the libretto for Michael Berkeley's work “Farewell”, written in memory of Sir Paul McCartney's wife, Linda.
Her journalism includes The Telegraph, Independent, the Financial Times, the TLS, Big Issue and Vogue. She has taught at Cambridge, Bristol and Birmingham Universities and she was Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Warwick. She is currently completing a further novel for Virago.
Elizabeth is a tutor for the diplomas and certificates in Fiction and Writing for Performance as well as supervising MSt students at PACE. She’s very experienced in teaching mature students and her classes tend to be thematic and discursive as well as informative; she hopes by the end of her course students feel they have learned rather than simply been taught. Her courses often include visual material, film, and music.
