esley Glaister was born in Northamptonshire and grew up in Suffolk, moving to Sheffield where she took a degree with the Open University. She was 'discovered' by the novelist Hilary Mantel when she attended a course given by the Arvon Foundation in 1989. She lives with her husband between Sheffield, Edinburgh and Orkney and has three sons. She teaches Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam University and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.