Laura Barnett is an author, journalist and teacher of creative writing.

Her fourth novel, This Beating Heart, is out in August 2022; her third, Gifts, is released in paperback in November.

Her first novel, The Versions of Us, was a number-one bestseller. You can read an extract from it here. The book is published in the US by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and in 23 other languages – including German, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Czech and Mandarin. Her second novel, Greatest Hits, is also published in the UK by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, in the US by Europa Editions, and in various other countries and languages.

As an arts journalist and theatre critic, she has written regularly for The Guardian, The Observer, The Daily Telegraph and Time Out London.

Her non-fiction book, Advice from the Players, is published by Nick Hern Books. You can order the book here and read an extract from it in The Guardian.

Laura lives with her husband Andy, son Caleb and cat Eno (after Brian, since you’re asking) in rural Kent.

The fiction she loves best takes the world we know, and our own familiar, everyday lives, and renders them rich and strange. Among the writers who’ve most inspired her along the way – and continue to inspire her – are Anne Tyler; Alice Munro; Joyce Carol Oates; Elizabeth Jane Howard; Tessa Hadley and Richard Yates.

As well as novels, she writes short stories, and teaches creative writing – she’s a senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, she teaches for Curtis Brown Creative and is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow. She has also worked as a mentor for the charity Arts Emergency (they’re amazing – check them out), and the writers’ development agency Spread The Word.

You can watch Laura’s TedX talk on originality in fiction, given at Cambridge University in 2017, on YouTube here.

Her literary agent is the lovely Judith Murray at Greene and Heaton. If you want to get in touch with Laura, please contact Judith first.