Gwendoline Riley was born in London in 1979 and has been hailed as one of the most significant young British writers. She is is the author of six novels, including My Phantoms, which was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize, and First Love, which was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Literature, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Gordon Burn Prize, and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. She has also been awarded a Betty Trask Award and a Somerset Maugham Award, and has been shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. In 2018, the Times Literary Supplement named her as one of the twenty best British and Irish novelists working today.