Jill Dawson

Notable work and positions

Novelist and poet
University of East Anglia - Creative Writing Fellow
Gold Dust Mentoring Writers - Founder and Director

Biography

Jill Dawson is an English novelist and poet born in Durham in 1962. She began publishing poetry in pamphlets and small magazines before her first novel, Trick of the Light, appeared in 1996; she has since written twelve novels, edited six anthologies of poetry and short stories, and published one poetry collection. Her novel Fred & Edie was shortlisted for the Whitbread and Orange prizes, The Great Lover was a Richard and Judy Summer Read, Lucky Bunny won a Fiction Uncovered Award, and The Crime Writer, about novelist Patricia Highsmith, won the East Anglian Book of the Year. Dawson was the British Council Writing Fellow at Amherst College in 1997 and later the Creative Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia, where she taught on the MA in Writing; she has also taught creative writing for the Arvon Foundation, the Faber Academy, and the Guardian/UEA and Sunday Times/Oxford Summer School programs, and internationally in the United States, Australia, Indonesia, France, Singapore, and Switzerland. She founded and directs Gold Dust Mentoring Writers, matching established authors with new writers, and has been a Royal Literary Fund Advisory Fellow since 2008. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2020 and received an honorary doctorate from Anglia Ruskin University in 2006. She lives in the Cambridgeshire Fens.

Career highlights

• Fred & Edie Sceptre, 2000 · Based on the historic Thompson and Bywaters murder trial; shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction.
• The Great Lover Sceptre, 2009 · A novel about the poet Rupert Brooke; a best-seller and Richard and Judy Summer Read.
• The Crime Writer Sceptre, 2016 · About novelist Patricia Highsmith; winner of the East Anglian Book of the Year.
• Gold Dust Mentoring Writers Founder and director · A mentoring scheme matching established authors with new writers working toward publication.
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature Elected 2020.