Deborah Levy

Playwright, novelist and poet Deborah Levy (Fellow Royal Society of Literature) was born in 1959 in South Africa. She moved to Britain with her family and studied theatre at Dartington College of Arts. She was a Creative Arts Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, between 1989 and 1991.

She is a regular contributor of articles and reviews to newspapers and magazines including The Independent, The Guardian and the New Statesman. Formerly director and writer for MANACT Theatre Company, Cardiff, Deborah Levy's plays include "Pax" (1984); "Heresies:Eva and Moses" (1985), written for the Royal Shakespeare Company; "Clam" (1985); "The B File" (1993); and "Honey Baby" (1995). She is also the author of a libretto adapted from Federico Garcia Lorca's play "Blood Wedding." A collection of her plays, "Plays: 1" was published in 2000.

She is also the author of three collections of short stories: "Ophelia and the Great Idea" (1989); "Pillow Talk in Europe And Other Places" (2004); and "Black Vodka" (2013). The latter was shortlisted for the International Frank O’Connor Award.

"An Amorous Discourse in the Suburbs of Hell," a collection of poems, was published in 1990, and she wrote the screenplay for a short film "Suburban Psycho," televised by the BBC in 1998. Levy also adapted Carol Shield's novel, "Unless," and "Chance Acquaintances" by Colette, for BBC Radio 4.

Levy is also the author of seven novels: "Beautiful Mutants" (1989); "Swallowing Geography" (1993); "The Unloved" (1994); "Diary of a Steak" (1997); "Billy & Girl" (1999); "Swimming Home" (2011); and "Hot Milk" (2016). She has been shortlisted twice for the Booker Prize, in 2012 and 2016.

Levy’s autobiographical essay on writing, "Things I Don't Want to Know," a response to the essay of the same title by George Orwell, was published by Notting Hill Editions in 2013 and in paperback by Penguin in 2014. She has more recently written a sequel, "The Cost of Living" (2018).

Her latest book, "The Man Who Saw Everything," is on the Booker Prize longlist. The Booker Prize is the leading literary award in the English speaking world, which has brought recognition, reward and readership to outstanding fiction for over 50 years. It is awarded annually to the best novel of the year written in English and published in the UK or Ireland.